1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:07,280
Speaker 1: Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by Apple Books. Hi,

2
00:00:07,320 --> 00:00:13,119
Speaker 1: I'm Danielle Robe and welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's book Club. Okay,

3
00:00:13,119 --> 00:00:19,120
Speaker 1: this week we are time traveling with Philippa Gregory, prolific author, feminist, historian,

4
00:00:19,560 --> 00:00:21,960
Speaker 1: and I don't want to overstate it, but she might

5
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:25,759
Speaker 1: be my new bestie. What inspires you to write these

6
00:00:25,800 --> 00:00:27,880
Speaker 1: women who are not likable or good?

7
00:00:28,200 --> 00:00:31,280
Speaker 2: Because I don't believe women who are likable or good.

8
00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:33,760
Speaker 2: To be honest with you, I mean, I myself lead

9
00:00:33,800 --> 00:00:36,839
Speaker 2: a life of playing with purity. Of course, let's establish that, but.

10
00:00:38,280 --> 00:00:42,240
Speaker 1: Me too, yes, okay. Philippa is the woman behind over

11
00:00:42,320 --> 00:00:47,120
Speaker 1: fifty historical fiction novels set across medieval and Tudor England.

12
00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:51,760
Speaker 1: She is a researcher. I can't state that enough. A researcher,

13
00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:56,960
Speaker 1: deeply obsessed primary sources, dusty archives, the whole thing, and

14
00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:00,040
Speaker 1: she transforms those public records into stories that feel so

15
00:01:00,600 --> 00:01:06,040
Speaker 1: deeply and beautifully personal to women. She basically ushered in

16
00:01:06,080 --> 00:01:09,080
Speaker 1: a whole new era of historical fiction where the women

17
00:01:09,120 --> 00:01:12,360
Speaker 1: in the footnotes are instead at the center of the story.

18
00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:15,720
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding. She pulls receipts from five hundred years ago.

19
00:01:15,800 --> 00:01:19,240
Speaker 1: She'll take a character mentioned maybe twice in a history

20
00:01:19,240 --> 00:01:22,360
Speaker 1: book and deep dive into research to build out her

21
00:01:22,560 --> 00:01:27,600
Speaker 1: entire world, her inner life, her motivations, her complications. The

22
00:01:27,640 --> 00:01:31,319
Speaker 1: woman who history dismissed in a single sentence gets four

23
00:01:31,400 --> 00:01:34,919
Speaker 1: hundred pages. It's no surprise that several of her books

24
00:01:34,959 --> 00:01:37,640
Speaker 1: have been adapted for film and TV. Right, you might

25
00:01:37,720 --> 00:01:40,240
Speaker 1: know The Other Boleyn Girl, which starred Natalie Portman and

26
00:01:40,280 --> 00:01:44,240
Speaker 1: Scarlett Johanson. But Philip doesn't think she's giving women from

27
00:01:44,240 --> 00:01:49,000
Speaker 1: centuries ago a voice. She thinks she's giving us, you, me,

28
00:01:49,840 --> 00:01:54,520
Speaker 1: everyone listening stories about ourselves. And she says she's doing

29
00:01:54,600 --> 00:01:57,360
Speaker 1: it so we know where we come from and then,

30
00:01:57,400 --> 00:02:01,240
Speaker 1: maybe more importantly, where we can go. You are in

31
00:02:01,320 --> 00:02:07,200
Speaker 1: the right place. Let's turn the page with Philippa. Gregory, Philippa,

32
00:02:07,320 --> 00:02:08,200
Speaker 1: Welcome to the club.

33
00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:10,840
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be with you.

34
00:02:11,800 --> 00:02:15,560
Speaker 1: Well, you've really spent your whole career showing how women's

35
00:02:15,600 --> 00:02:19,920
Speaker 1: private lives shape the public world. And you've written some

36
00:02:20,240 --> 00:02:24,560
Speaker 1: very juicy, very complicated characters along the way. And with

37
00:02:24,639 --> 00:02:28,040
Speaker 1: that in mind, who would be the worst dinner guest

38
00:02:28,280 --> 00:02:30,720
Speaker 1: and who would secretly be the most fun.

39
00:02:31,480 --> 00:02:33,600
Speaker 2: I think Anne Boleyn would be the worst dinner guest

40
00:02:34,240 --> 00:02:37,800
Speaker 2: because she is on the record for poisoning Archbishop Fisher,

41
00:02:38,720 --> 00:02:41,959
Speaker 2: so you don't really want someone who is experiencing poisons

42
00:02:41,960 --> 00:02:42,919
Speaker 2: at your dinner table.

43
00:02:43,200 --> 00:02:46,000
Speaker 1: I feel like the Berlin sisters would be so wild

44
00:02:46,120 --> 00:02:48,919
Speaker 1: to be in a group chat with. For those who

45
00:02:48,960 --> 00:02:52,959
Speaker 1: don't know as much about them, which notable celebrity would

46
00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:54,280
Speaker 1: you compare each sister to?

47
00:02:55,600 --> 00:02:58,520
Speaker 2: Oh, you've got the wrong person here. I'm so sorry.

48
00:02:58,639 --> 00:03:01,480
Speaker 2: I don't know celebrities. If you spend your life in

49
00:03:01,560 --> 00:03:05,280
Speaker 2: medieval and Tudor England, you're not really up to speed.

50
00:03:05,960 --> 00:03:09,720
Speaker 2: Mary Berlin we know historically very very little about her.

51
00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:12,720
Speaker 2: Anne Berlin is probably the best recorded woman in the

52
00:03:12,760 --> 00:03:17,079
Speaker 2: Tudor world, so we know that she was ambitious, highly intelligent,

53
00:03:17,639 --> 00:03:20,920
Speaker 2: very alluring, but not conventionally beautiful. And we know that

54
00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:25,680
Speaker 2: Mary Berlin was very pretty and very agreeable and more

55
00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:30,440
Speaker 2: sexually permissive than her sister unless she was coerced. But

56
00:03:30,520 --> 00:03:34,360
Speaker 2: the problem with consent in the ancient world as today

57
00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:37,320
Speaker 2: is that it's very very difficult to figure out who

58
00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:39,880
Speaker 2: is asking what and who is saying what, And that's

59
00:03:40,200 --> 00:03:43,160
Speaker 2: particularly important to me when I'm writing the lives of

60
00:03:43,440 --> 00:03:44,200
Speaker 2: historical women.

61
00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:49,160
Speaker 1: That comes through in nearly all of your work. One

62
00:03:49,160 --> 00:03:52,600
Speaker 1: of the things I'm particularly interested in asking you is

63
00:03:52,880 --> 00:03:55,880
Speaker 1: when you realize that the power often lives in the

64
00:03:55,960 --> 00:04:00,240
Speaker 1: personal and not the public record, because most historians and

65
00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:02,320
Speaker 1: writers go straight to public record.

66
00:04:04,360 --> 00:04:07,960
Speaker 2: Yes, but you have to then read the public record

67
00:04:08,240 --> 00:04:10,920
Speaker 2: with a genuine curiosity and a genuine desire to know

68
00:04:10,960 --> 00:04:15,600
Speaker 2: about women. Women are all over the public records, but

69
00:04:15,800 --> 00:04:20,039
Speaker 2: they're mostly recorded for crime or for misbehaving in a

70
00:04:20,080 --> 00:04:23,479
Speaker 2: way that the men who are the record keepers don't like.

71
00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:26,760
Speaker 2: So we have lots of records are rioting women. We

72
00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:29,320
Speaker 2: have lots of records of criminal women, and we have

73
00:04:29,640 --> 00:04:32,359
Speaker 2: lots of records for instance, of witchcraft. But we have

74
00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:35,119
Speaker 2: to read the records and say, are these women really

75
00:04:35,200 --> 00:04:37,680
Speaker 2: rioting or are they taking place in a bit of

76
00:04:37,720 --> 00:04:42,280
Speaker 2: social theater whereby they appear to threaten, say bakers and

77
00:04:42,360 --> 00:04:44,839
Speaker 2: corn merchants, and then they get the bread or the

78
00:04:44,880 --> 00:04:49,200
Speaker 2: corn sold the right price. That might be a very

79
00:04:49,200 --> 00:04:53,279
Speaker 2: famous history, and ep Thompson said the political economy of

80
00:04:53,320 --> 00:04:57,800
Speaker 2: theater that like everybody knows this isn't a riot. Everybody

81
00:04:57,839 --> 00:05:01,880
Speaker 2: knows this is a demonstration, and only the elite and

82
00:05:01,920 --> 00:05:04,719
Speaker 2: the men who are frightened of these women call it

83
00:05:04,760 --> 00:05:08,880
Speaker 2: a riot. Similarly, with witchcraft, we believe now that most

84
00:05:08,920 --> 00:05:13,279
Speaker 2: of the trials of witches were actually constructed out of

85
00:05:13,360 --> 00:05:16,719
Speaker 2: male fear. And so there's plenty of women in the record,

86
00:05:16,760 --> 00:05:19,480
Speaker 2: but you have to read the records to find the

87
00:05:19,520 --> 00:05:22,320
Speaker 2: real women. You can't take them aut face value.

88
00:05:23,960 --> 00:05:26,880
Speaker 1: Can you help me understand your process more in that way, like,

89
00:05:27,120 --> 00:05:30,240
Speaker 1: how do you even dig into private records? Is it

90
00:05:30,279 --> 00:05:34,279
Speaker 1: based on rumors and pass down stories? How do you

91
00:05:34,320 --> 00:05:37,719
Speaker 1: get your information in your data?

92
00:05:37,800 --> 00:05:43,280
Speaker 2: There's a tremendous amount which is literally not just recorded,

93
00:05:43,480 --> 00:05:47,520
Speaker 2: but it's now digitized, so I now research from my study.

94
00:05:47,560 --> 00:05:50,840
Speaker 2: I'm in my study now this is my research material.

95
00:05:51,120 --> 00:05:53,400
Speaker 2: So you know, a lot of it is simply written

96
00:05:53,440 --> 00:05:56,880
Speaker 2: and published. It's not hard to find. There's a question

97
00:05:56,920 --> 00:05:59,200
Speaker 2: of how you read it, which is really really important.

98
00:05:59,520 --> 00:06:04,159
Speaker 2: But there's a tremendous amount still untapped in records, in

99
00:06:04,200 --> 00:06:07,520
Speaker 2: private records or in libraries that people haven't bothered to read,

100
00:06:07,640 --> 00:06:10,239
Speaker 2: or in you know, catalogs that people haven't gone through,

101
00:06:10,680 --> 00:06:12,680
Speaker 2: or I always say to people, you know, if you've

102
00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:14,800
Speaker 2: got a chest in your attic with writing in it.

103
00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:17,600
Speaker 2: How I look at it because it may well be

104
00:06:17,920 --> 00:06:20,360
Speaker 2: a lost record, or it might be a record which

105
00:06:20,400 --> 00:06:22,960
Speaker 2: hasn't even been lost. It might be your grandmother's dairies

106
00:06:23,320 --> 00:06:26,360
Speaker 2: and they are now history. So you know, really really

107
00:06:26,400 --> 00:06:29,120
Speaker 2: respect the documents that you happen to have access to,

108
00:06:29,480 --> 00:06:32,600
Speaker 2: and then when you read them, read them. What I

109
00:06:32,640 --> 00:06:34,839
Speaker 2: say is you read through them. You don't read the

110
00:06:34,880 --> 00:06:37,320
Speaker 2: surface store. You read right the way through it and

111
00:06:37,360 --> 00:06:39,680
Speaker 2: try and imagine the lives of the people who are

112
00:06:39,760 --> 00:06:41,159
Speaker 2: often wrongly described.

113
00:06:41,880 --> 00:06:44,680
Speaker 1: When you say read through, how does one do that?

114
00:06:44,760 --> 00:06:46,760
Speaker 1: Are you picking up on context clues? What do you

115
00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:47,320
Speaker 1: mean by that?

116
00:06:47,839 --> 00:06:51,080
Speaker 2: I think it's bearing in mind that everybody is always

117
00:06:51,120 --> 00:06:54,840
Speaker 2: an unreliable witness. You never never trust anybody's word. As

118
00:06:54,839 --> 00:06:58,560
Speaker 2: a historian, it's almost like being a detective. So when

119
00:06:58,640 --> 00:07:02,359
Speaker 2: I say have be a kind of a riot, I

120
00:07:02,520 --> 00:07:05,120
Speaker 2: know that it will be written by a man, because

121
00:07:05,160 --> 00:07:08,200
Speaker 2: the women who are writing are probably illiterate, so you

122
00:07:08,440 --> 00:07:10,960
Speaker 2: very rarely get a letter from a working class woman

123
00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:14,680
Speaker 2: up until the eighteenth century, So I know that this

124
00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:16,960
Speaker 2: is a man recording it. Then you read what he says,

125
00:07:16,960 --> 00:07:21,400
Speaker 2: and he says they were a motley bunch in rags

126
00:07:21,440 --> 00:07:24,520
Speaker 2: and terrifying to be seen, and they let out a

127
00:07:24,640 --> 00:07:28,160
Speaker 2: terrifying yell and a scream, and they didn't have weapons,

128
00:07:28,200 --> 00:07:32,520
Speaker 2: but they were absolutely terrifying. And if you're reading this carefully,

129
00:07:32,520 --> 00:07:34,960
Speaker 2: you go like, okay, so they were poor, they were

130
00:07:34,960 --> 00:07:38,320
Speaker 2: not well dressed, they were not well behaved by your standard,

131
00:07:38,640 --> 00:07:41,119
Speaker 2: mister man, whoever you are, mister justice of the peace.

132
00:07:41,880 --> 00:07:45,440
Speaker 2: They don't have weapons, so they're not gone to kill anybody.

133
00:07:45,440 --> 00:07:48,520
Speaker 2: They're not. They're armed for a fight. They are they're doing,

134
00:07:48,680 --> 00:07:53,320
Speaker 2: if you think of it, sympathetically, peaceful civil disobedience. And

135
00:07:53,800 --> 00:07:56,880
Speaker 2: what we see in our own world now as well

136
00:07:56,880 --> 00:07:59,760
Speaker 2: as then, is the fact that the people who report

137
00:07:59,840 --> 00:08:03,120
Speaker 2: it first are the ones who set, as it were,

138
00:08:03,920 --> 00:08:07,160
Speaker 2: the prism on it. The way we see it is

139
00:08:07,200 --> 00:08:10,400
Speaker 2: set by the people who report it, and up until

140
00:08:10,720 --> 00:08:14,840
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, that's always going to be the rich men,

141
00:08:15,560 --> 00:08:18,360
Speaker 2: and so their report is always going to be on

142
00:08:18,480 --> 00:08:21,160
Speaker 2: the side of rich men, which is always going to

143
00:08:21,200 --> 00:08:22,520
Speaker 2: be against poor.

144
00:08:22,360 --> 00:08:26,680
Speaker 1: Women, you know. Gloria steinem Offen says that history is

145
00:08:26,720 --> 00:08:30,000
Speaker 1: written by the winners. Oftentimes in these records, history is

146
00:08:30,040 --> 00:08:33,200
Speaker 1: written by the rich men. How does this affect how

147
00:08:33,240 --> 00:08:36,160
Speaker 1: you read other books, like when you read memoirs, are

148
00:08:36,200 --> 00:08:40,000
Speaker 1: you constantly asking yourself? Is this a reliable witness? What

149
00:08:40,040 --> 00:08:43,320
Speaker 1: does this story actually mean about their interior lives?

150
00:08:43,960 --> 00:08:46,680
Speaker 2: I always start off saying, this is an unreliable witness.

151
00:08:46,920 --> 00:08:50,840
Speaker 2: We are all unreliable witnesses. When I am even telling

152
00:08:50,880 --> 00:08:54,479
Speaker 2: you things, there are things naturally which I am withholding

153
00:08:54,720 --> 00:08:57,200
Speaker 2: the days I can't be bothered to read carefully, to

154
00:08:57,280 --> 00:09:00,240
Speaker 2: days when I take something of space value, so my

155
00:09:00,280 --> 00:09:04,640
Speaker 2: own prejudices overcome me. We're all unreliable witnesses. I never

156
00:09:04,679 --> 00:09:10,200
Speaker 2: believe anything anybody tells me anymore. And at the same

157
00:09:10,280 --> 00:09:14,040
Speaker 2: time me I am naturally an optimist and I am

158
00:09:14,160 --> 00:09:18,439
Speaker 2: always hopeful. But one of the things that's really wonderful

159
00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:23,280
Speaker 2: about looking at historical documents with immense skepticism is that

160
00:09:23,320 --> 00:09:26,440
Speaker 2: sometimes what you read through them is a completely thrilling,

161
00:09:26,520 --> 00:09:30,040
Speaker 2: untold history. And for instance, in my new novel The

162
00:09:30,080 --> 00:09:34,800
Speaker 2: Bolin Traitor, I suggest that Jane Berlin, sister in law

163
00:09:34,800 --> 00:09:38,240
Speaker 2: to Anne Berlin, was working as a spy for Thomas Cromwell.

164
00:09:38,720 --> 00:09:41,920
Speaker 2: There's nothing of that on the record in an absolutely

165
00:09:41,960 --> 00:09:45,480
Speaker 2: clear way, except you see when she gets money and

166
00:09:45,520 --> 00:09:48,600
Speaker 2: when she doesn't. When she gets positioned, and she doesn't

167
00:09:48,800 --> 00:09:51,880
Speaker 2: when she gets positioned when nobody else gets positioned. Are

168
00:09:51,960 --> 00:09:55,880
Speaker 2: only when the times when Cromwell is in power and

169
00:09:56,160 --> 00:09:59,800
Speaker 2: there's no as it were, smoking gun there, there's just

170
00:09:59,840 --> 00:10:02,000
Speaker 2: a suggestion that that's what's happening.

171
00:10:02,880 --> 00:10:06,560
Speaker 1: So I was a trained journalist for years, and I

172
00:10:06,720 --> 00:10:09,680
Speaker 1: was taught in newsrooms to ask myself three questions. The

173
00:10:09,720 --> 00:10:13,240
Speaker 1: first is who wrote the story? The second is who's

174
00:10:13,280 --> 00:10:16,360
Speaker 1: missing from the story, and the third is who benefits

175
00:10:16,480 --> 00:10:19,640
Speaker 1: from the story? Are there any specific questions? I love

176
00:10:19,679 --> 00:10:20,560
Speaker 1: that you're not in your head.

177
00:10:20,600 --> 00:10:23,560
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm nodding my head enthusiastically. I also trained

178
00:10:23,559 --> 00:10:25,920
Speaker 2: as a journalist, and I worked as a journalist for

179
00:10:26,080 --> 00:10:29,880
Speaker 2: provincial press and also for the BBC. And one of

180
00:10:29,920 --> 00:10:32,640
Speaker 2: the quotes that I remember, really, really vividly is very

181
00:10:32,679 --> 00:10:36,800
Speaker 2: famous BBC man journalist who said, why are the lying

182
00:10:36,880 --> 00:10:42,760
Speaker 2: bastards lying to me? I love that not are they?

183
00:10:42,880 --> 00:10:46,199
Speaker 2: But why are they? And I think you just have

184
00:10:46,400 --> 00:10:50,840
Speaker 2: to always assume that when someone writes something down it's

185
00:10:50,960 --> 00:10:54,040
Speaker 2: for a reason. And even if they say it's just

186
00:10:54,080 --> 00:10:56,480
Speaker 2: to record that it happened, why do they want to

187
00:10:56,520 --> 00:10:59,280
Speaker 2: record that it happened? What is there about this that

188
00:10:59,400 --> 00:11:02,480
Speaker 2: leads into depend and the same for your own journals

189
00:11:02,480 --> 00:11:06,679
Speaker 2: and memoirs and diaries. There always is a reason for

190
00:11:06,840 --> 00:11:10,680
Speaker 2: you wanting to record an event, which, if you read

191
00:11:10,720 --> 00:11:14,240
Speaker 2: it critically, takes you beyond the surface of the story.

192
00:11:14,600 --> 00:11:16,520
Speaker 1: We're going to get into your background a little bit more,

193
00:11:16,520 --> 00:11:19,920
Speaker 1: because how you became a historian is actually quite funny

194
00:11:19,960 --> 00:11:25,800
Speaker 1: to me. But I am curious about more of your

195
00:11:25,840 --> 00:11:29,880
Speaker 1: process in terms of you write fiction books, but they're

196
00:11:29,960 --> 00:11:32,920
Speaker 1: rooted in history. So when do you decide that the

197
00:11:33,040 --> 00:11:35,840
Speaker 1: history stops and the fiction starts. How do you determine this?

198
00:11:37,080 --> 00:11:40,120
Speaker 2: I'm really interested that you describe it in those terms,

199
00:11:40,440 --> 00:11:42,920
Speaker 2: because what people often say to me is how much

200
00:11:43,400 --> 00:11:46,160
Speaker 2: is fiction? How much is history? And that's impossible to

201
00:11:46,240 --> 00:11:50,160
Speaker 2: describe it. It's every book. There's a different proportion because

202
00:11:50,400 --> 00:11:54,319
Speaker 2: for every book I have more facts or less facts

203
00:11:54,360 --> 00:11:57,480
Speaker 2: about my two protagonists. But what you say is how

204
00:11:57,600 --> 00:12:00,200
Speaker 2: far in a sense, how far into the narrative does

205
00:12:00,240 --> 00:12:03,920
Speaker 2: it go before you turn to fiction? And quite often,

206
00:12:04,480 --> 00:12:08,120
Speaker 2: if I have a lot of someone's biography, I can

207
00:12:08,160 --> 00:12:12,800
Speaker 2: go a long, long, long way without ever not writing

208
00:12:12,880 --> 00:12:15,560
Speaker 2: what is in a history book? So you could pick

209
00:12:15,640 --> 00:12:17,280
Speaker 2: up the novel and you could pick up a history book.

210
00:12:17,280 --> 00:12:19,400
Speaker 2: You could read them side by side and you would

211
00:12:19,400 --> 00:12:22,520
Speaker 2: say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes. The difference

212
00:12:22,600 --> 00:12:26,600
Speaker 2: between a fiction and a history, a difference between a

213
00:12:26,679 --> 00:12:31,040
Speaker 2: historical fiction and a straight history, is that as a novelist,

214
00:12:31,160 --> 00:12:34,240
Speaker 2: I am allowed, Indeed, it is my job to talk

215
00:12:34,280 --> 00:12:37,319
Speaker 2: about the inner life and to talk about the psychology

216
00:12:37,320 --> 00:12:40,040
Speaker 2: of people and the feelings of people. When I'm writing

217
00:12:40,080 --> 00:12:43,080
Speaker 2: as a historian and I write history too, I'm not

218
00:12:43,240 --> 00:12:45,880
Speaker 2: licensed to do that unless I have evidence for it.

219
00:12:46,440 --> 00:12:49,400
Speaker 2: And up until about the middle of the eighteenth century,

220
00:12:49,800 --> 00:12:53,480
Speaker 2: we have very, very very few records of what women

221
00:12:53,640 --> 00:12:57,719
Speaker 2: felt or what women thought. We have some records, not

222
00:12:57,880 --> 00:13:01,240
Speaker 2: a great deal of what they did, but their inner

223
00:13:01,280 --> 00:13:04,440
Speaker 2: lives are a closed book to us. So that's where

224
00:13:04,520 --> 00:13:08,240
Speaker 2: fiction is so incredibly powerful. If you're talking about youdor women.

225
00:13:09,320 --> 00:13:13,760
Speaker 2: Nobody knows why Elizabeth I did things. We don't have

226
00:13:13,880 --> 00:13:17,120
Speaker 2: any diary from her saying woke up this morning and

227
00:13:17,840 --> 00:13:20,800
Speaker 2: really thought I'd take on the Spanish. You know, that

228
00:13:20,960 --> 00:13:23,959
Speaker 2: just doesn't happen. But as a novelist, I can look

229
00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:25,880
Speaker 2: at what she does during the day, I can look

230
00:13:25,880 --> 00:13:28,760
Speaker 2: at her consistent principles, and I can say this is

231
00:13:28,800 --> 00:13:32,320
Speaker 2: a woman who feels this very strongly and very passionately,

232
00:13:32,480 --> 00:13:34,880
Speaker 2: who's prepared to give up, for instance, the love of

233
00:13:34,880 --> 00:13:37,679
Speaker 2: her life in order to be secure on the throne.

234
00:13:38,040 --> 00:13:42,080
Speaker 2: That tells you a huge amount about her character. But

235
00:13:42,800 --> 00:13:45,880
Speaker 2: if you did it as a historian, and lots of

236
00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:49,920
Speaker 2: historians do do it, it's not proper history. It's fiction. So

237
00:13:50,080 --> 00:13:53,400
Speaker 2: lots of historians write fiction, just as I, as a

238
00:13:53,559 --> 00:13:57,000
Speaker 2: historical novelist, often write absolutely straight history.

239
00:13:57,640 --> 00:14:01,400
Speaker 1: Have you ever started going down a rabbit hole and thought, oh,

240
00:14:01,480 --> 00:14:03,640
Speaker 1: this story is just not worth telling.

241
00:14:04,400 --> 00:14:09,440
Speaker 2: All the time? I mean, where it's more exciting than that.

242
00:14:09,559 --> 00:14:13,080
Speaker 2: To me, I often start with one character and find

243
00:14:13,080 --> 00:14:16,520
Speaker 2: myself led off to another one and go like, not, not,

244
00:14:16,640 --> 00:14:19,560
Speaker 2: this story is not worth telling. But I'm either going

245
00:14:19,600 --> 00:14:22,360
Speaker 2: to put the first story to one side and concentrate

246
00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:24,920
Speaker 2: on the rabbit hole I've disappeared down, or I'm going

247
00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:29,160
Speaker 2: to say that's saved and coming back to that. There'll

248
00:14:29,160 --> 00:14:31,360
Speaker 2: be another novel. There'll be time for that another time.

249
00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:35,200
Speaker 2: It happened to me literally last week when I was

250
00:14:35,200 --> 00:14:39,560
Speaker 2: writing about one quite well known Tudor woman, woman at

251
00:14:39,600 --> 00:14:42,560
Speaker 2: the Tudor court, at the court of Catherine Parr, and

252
00:14:42,640 --> 00:14:45,600
Speaker 2: I discovered that her sister in law not only leaves

253
00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:49,239
Speaker 2: her husband at a time where people think that divorces

254
00:14:49,400 --> 00:14:52,520
Speaker 2: marriage is insoluble, but she conspires with her lover to

255
00:14:52,640 --> 00:14:55,760
Speaker 2: murder him, and she goes to a criminal trial for

256
00:14:55,920 --> 00:14:58,320
Speaker 2: murdering him. And I just went, I've never heard of

257
00:14:58,400 --> 00:15:01,000
Speaker 2: this woman before. Nobody, I'm how has ever mentioned this

258
00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:03,120
Speaker 2: woman to be I'm going to have to save her

259
00:15:03,200 --> 00:15:04,320
Speaker 2: up and look at her later.

260
00:15:12,560 --> 00:15:15,880
Speaker 1: So you are in your seventh decade of life. You've

261
00:15:15,920 --> 00:15:19,800
Speaker 1: written over fifty books. I can only imagine the thousands

262
00:15:19,880 --> 00:15:22,920
Speaker 1: of pages that you have read and written and the

263
00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:26,680
Speaker 1: discoveries you've made from the things you've said. It sounds

264
00:15:26,680 --> 00:15:30,520
Speaker 1: like you're actually making some historical discoveries. Is that true?

265
00:15:31,120 --> 00:15:32,840
Speaker 2: Yes? Sometimes I do.

266
00:15:33,920 --> 00:15:35,240
Speaker 1: And so how are you doing that?

267
00:15:36,880 --> 00:15:37,000
Speaker 2: Uh?

268
00:15:38,600 --> 00:15:41,880
Speaker 1: Because there's I mean you said there's a digital footprint, right,

269
00:15:41,920 --> 00:15:44,240
Speaker 1: but there's not a ton of physical evidence.

270
00:15:45,640 --> 00:15:50,840
Speaker 2: Well, sometimes it's just again reading through the record. So

271
00:15:51,720 --> 00:15:54,000
Speaker 2: the one that was most exciting to me was I

272
00:15:54,040 --> 00:15:57,560
Speaker 2: wrote a novel about Queen is the First Lover. Robert

273
00:15:57,640 --> 00:16:03,800
Speaker 2: Dudley and his wife died suddenly at home, and what

274
00:16:04,080 --> 00:16:08,400
Speaker 2: killed Amy Dudley has absorbed historians for years and years

275
00:16:08,440 --> 00:16:10,360
Speaker 2: and years, and a lot of doctors have got involved

276
00:16:10,400 --> 00:16:13,360
Speaker 2: in as well and produced different theories. And the theory

277
00:16:13,400 --> 00:16:15,840
Speaker 2: that was most prevalent when I was writing about it

278
00:16:16,400 --> 00:16:18,680
Speaker 2: was a doctor who had written in the nineteen fifties

279
00:16:18,960 --> 00:16:22,400
Speaker 2: and said he thought that she had probably cancer which

280
00:16:22,440 --> 00:16:25,560
Speaker 2: had thinned her bones. So when she stepped off a

281
00:16:25,600 --> 00:16:28,720
Speaker 2: shallow step in her house, she misstepped and her neck

282
00:16:28,800 --> 00:16:29,640
Speaker 2: broke and she died.

283
00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:36,040
Speaker 1: And I just thought that was so unlikely, so improvable, given.

284
00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:38,560
Speaker 2: That her husband was desperately in love with Elizabeth the

285
00:16:38,640 --> 00:16:42,560
Speaker 2: First and looked very very likely to marry Elizabeth First,

286
00:16:42,800 --> 00:16:47,320
Speaker 2: given that Elizabeth the First advisor, William Cecil, was absolutely

287
00:16:47,360 --> 00:16:50,760
Speaker 2: opposed to this marriage, and given that William Cecil had

288
00:16:51,360 --> 00:16:55,400
Speaker 2: an enormous spy ring, I went, is it really really

289
00:16:55,560 --> 00:17:00,920
Speaker 2: likely that Robert Dudley's wife, the one thing that makes respectable,

290
00:17:01,920 --> 00:17:05,199
Speaker 2: drops dead at her home, which means that he is

291
00:17:05,240 --> 00:17:08,280
Speaker 2: then suspected of her murder, which means that Elizabeth breaks

292
00:17:08,320 --> 00:17:11,159
Speaker 2: off relationships with him for months and months and months,

293
00:17:11,359 --> 00:17:13,120
Speaker 2: and when he does come back to her, they can

294
00:17:13,160 --> 00:17:16,200
Speaker 2: never be married because his terrible scandal is over him.

295
00:17:16,359 --> 00:17:18,879
Speaker 2: And I just don't believe it. I think William Cecil

296
00:17:18,960 --> 00:17:22,360
Speaker 2: killed her. So I wrote a novel. Because I'm a novelist,

297
00:17:22,440 --> 00:17:24,439
Speaker 2: I'm allowed to do that. I wrote a novel in

298
00:17:24,440 --> 00:17:26,399
Speaker 2: which I made it pretty clear that she was murdered

299
00:17:26,400 --> 00:17:28,800
Speaker 2: by somebody, and that it was to the advantage of

300
00:17:28,840 --> 00:17:34,160
Speaker 2: William Cecil, who therefore prevented Elizabeth marrying Robert Dudley. And

301
00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:40,840
Speaker 2: months after I had published, historian Chris Skinner discovered the

302
00:17:40,880 --> 00:17:43,959
Speaker 2: post mortem of Amy Dudley that nobody had seen before.

303
00:17:44,359 --> 00:17:46,760
Speaker 2: And she didn't die of a broken neck stepping off

304
00:17:46,760 --> 00:17:49,800
Speaker 2: a step. She had what they described as two great

305
00:17:49,920 --> 00:17:52,239
Speaker 2: dints in her head, as if someone had hit her

306
00:17:52,240 --> 00:17:54,560
Speaker 2: with a hammer and she was murdered. Ah.

307
00:17:56,040 --> 00:17:58,320
Speaker 1: You know, I know you are known and you call

308
00:17:58,359 --> 00:18:01,119
Speaker 1: yourself a feminist historian. But as I'm listening to you

309
00:18:01,160 --> 00:18:05,320
Speaker 1: share this story, I'm thinking you're like a secret feminist superhero.

310
00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:10,119
Speaker 1: You're rewriting what really should have been in the history

311
00:18:10,160 --> 00:18:13,320
Speaker 1: books that was missing for all these years. It's so fascinating.

312
00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:16,639
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I tried to do. I published a

313
00:18:17,520 --> 00:18:20,840
Speaker 2: year before last a book called Normal Women Nine hundred

314
00:18:20,880 --> 00:18:24,080
Speaker 2: Years of Making History, and that goes from ten sixty

315
00:18:24,119 --> 00:18:27,200
Speaker 2: six up to pretty well the present day in which

316
00:18:27,240 --> 00:18:30,280
Speaker 2: I'm trying to restore women to the historical record, and

317
00:18:30,359 --> 00:18:34,880
Speaker 2: tracing how women make progress in these centuries and how

318
00:18:34,880 --> 00:18:39,080
Speaker 2: they get pushed back, and that I mean, that feels

319
00:18:39,119 --> 00:18:41,159
Speaker 2: to me like my life's work. That feels to me

320
00:18:41,240 --> 00:18:43,360
Speaker 2: like the most important thing I've ever done. I love

321
00:18:43,400 --> 00:18:46,800
Speaker 2: the novels. The novels are, of course what I mostly do.

322
00:18:47,200 --> 00:18:51,000
Speaker 2: But to write a genuine history of England without any

323
00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:54,199
Speaker 2: fiction in it, which restores women to the record, is

324
00:18:54,240 --> 00:18:55,720
Speaker 2: the most important thing I've ever done.

325
00:18:55,760 --> 00:18:58,520
Speaker 1: I think, what do you see as your role in

326
00:18:58,560 --> 00:18:59,560
Speaker 1: the literary world?

327
00:19:00,200 --> 00:19:02,840
Speaker 2: I mean, as you say, I'm in my seventh decade,

328
00:19:03,119 --> 00:19:07,760
Speaker 2: I'm becoming a senior figure. I am certainly a role

329
00:19:07,840 --> 00:19:12,919
Speaker 2: model to some writers, and I am certainly an exemplar

330
00:19:12,960 --> 00:19:16,560
Speaker 2: to some publishers, who say, rather irritatingly, if you like

331
00:19:16,600 --> 00:19:22,159
Speaker 2: Philippa Gregory, you'll love this on someone else's book. And

332
00:19:22,200 --> 00:19:24,960
Speaker 2: I go like, well, yes, but you know I've not

333
00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:29,239
Speaker 2: quite finished yet. You could go on loving me. I

334
00:19:29,240 --> 00:19:32,600
Speaker 2: don't know what kind of helped me with the question,

335
00:19:32,760 --> 00:19:34,520
Speaker 2: what do you mean by that? What do you expect

336
00:19:34,520 --> 00:19:34,879
Speaker 2: me to be?

337
00:19:35,680 --> 00:19:39,280
Speaker 1: I don't have any expectations, I asked the question, because

338
00:19:39,440 --> 00:19:43,879
Speaker 1: as I'm listening to you speak, I'm seeing what a

339
00:19:44,600 --> 00:19:48,240
Speaker 1: rarity you are. You really carved your own lane, and

340
00:19:49,760 --> 00:19:52,800
Speaker 1: I can imagine early on in your career, like now,

341
00:19:52,840 --> 00:19:56,520
Speaker 1: because philip Ogregory is so successful, everyone wants a philip

342
00:19:56,560 --> 00:19:59,439
Speaker 1: A novel. But early on I can imagine that was

343
00:19:59,480 --> 00:20:03,040
Speaker 1: not easy to convince publishers. There really was no genre

344
00:20:03,119 --> 00:20:03,960
Speaker 1: for what you were doing.

345
00:20:04,840 --> 00:20:08,880
Speaker 2: No, Bizarrely, I was extremely lucky in that you're right,

346
00:20:09,359 --> 00:20:12,919
Speaker 2: there is now a Philippa Gregory brand, and you know

347
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:17,160
Speaker 2: what you're getting. When I started, I actually just occurred

348
00:20:17,640 --> 00:20:21,040
Speaker 2: in the literary world at a time that publishers were

349
00:20:21,080 --> 00:20:25,119
Speaker 2: really really getting anxious about the death of the historical novel.

350
00:20:25,560 --> 00:20:28,880
Speaker 2: There's a cohort of women who were writing post Second

351
00:20:28,920 --> 00:20:33,919
Speaker 2: World War historical fiction, which was very solidly researched historical fiction,

352
00:20:34,280 --> 00:20:38,399
Speaker 2: but which had the manners and the ethics and the

353
00:20:38,400 --> 00:20:42,240
Speaker 2: beliefs of women of the nineteen fifties, because of course,

354
00:20:42,320 --> 00:20:46,639
Speaker 2: you write out of your own consciousness. You write historical fiction,

355
00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:49,600
Speaker 2: but you're not really an eighteenth century woman or a

356
00:20:49,640 --> 00:20:53,040
Speaker 2: seventeenth century woman. You're really the time you were. And

357
00:20:53,400 --> 00:20:55,240
Speaker 2: all of those people who had been real fans of

358
00:20:55,280 --> 00:20:58,880
Speaker 2: this sort of writing had either died off or had

359
00:20:58,920 --> 00:21:03,120
Speaker 2: stopped buying them or stop reading them, because there's a

360
00:21:03,160 --> 00:21:07,000
Speaker 2: certain samliness about them, there's a certain conventionality about them,

361
00:21:07,600 --> 00:21:11,120
Speaker 2: and they are very very much saying, here's the king,

362
00:21:11,200 --> 00:21:13,960
Speaker 2: here's the queen. She's the most beautiful woman in the world.

363
00:21:14,160 --> 00:21:19,560
Speaker 2: He's really chivalrous. They were very deferential to their characters,

364
00:21:19,920 --> 00:21:22,840
Speaker 2: and so publishers were going like, how can we possibly

365
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:28,120
Speaker 2: revive historical fiction because it's become very very dull and

366
00:21:28,280 --> 00:21:32,679
Speaker 2: old fashioned and conventional. And as it happened, this is

367
00:21:32,720 --> 00:21:35,639
Speaker 2: the eighties, and I sent in my first novel I

368
00:21:35,640 --> 00:21:39,439
Speaker 2: had ever written, just unheard of. It was called Wide Acre.

369
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:43,240
Speaker 2: It was set in eighteenth century England, and it drew

370
00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:46,959
Speaker 2: on everything that I had learned from seven years at university,

371
00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:50,400
Speaker 2: three years during my PA, four years during my PhD,

372
00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:54,480
Speaker 2: in which I had had the immense privilege of studying

373
00:21:55,200 --> 00:22:01,520
Speaker 2: English Marxism, feminism, radical thinking about history, and so there

374
00:22:01,560 --> 00:22:04,960
Speaker 2: was nothing differential in it at all. It was quite sexy.

375
00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:09,919
Speaker 2: It was very sexy, It was very pacey, and it

376
00:22:10,040 --> 00:22:13,720
Speaker 2: concerned a woman who would not accept that her brother

377
00:22:13,800 --> 00:22:17,840
Speaker 2: inherited her family estate and who was absolutely determined to

378
00:22:17,840 --> 00:22:20,719
Speaker 2: get it off him. And one of the puffs on

379
00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:25,400
Speaker 2: the back of the book somebody wrote, knock Scarlet O'Hara

380
00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:29,600
Speaker 2: into short cotton socks. So she was a thoroughly bad woman.

381
00:22:29,640 --> 00:22:32,000
Speaker 2: She was a bad woman, and there was no suggestion

382
00:22:32,119 --> 00:22:35,359
Speaker 2: in my mind that I ought to write about a

383
00:22:35,440 --> 00:22:39,480
Speaker 2: good woman. You know. She was a ambitious, determined, greedy,

384
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:44,760
Speaker 2: sexually active, very ver y, willful woman whose ambition led

385
00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:48,359
Speaker 2: her to crime. She ended up murdering people. So it

386
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:52,520
Speaker 2: was very, very very new, and literally the publishers fell

387
00:22:52,520 --> 00:22:54,280
Speaker 2: on it. I was just very lucky. So it was

388
00:22:54,280 --> 00:22:56,919
Speaker 2: my first novel and it went to auction and it

389
00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:00,719
Speaker 2: was bought in the UK by Penguin Books and in

390
00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:03,280
Speaker 2: the States by HarperCollins.

391
00:23:03,720 --> 00:23:09,880
Speaker 1: Wow. And your mention of a bad woman, I think

392
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:12,400
Speaker 1: is so important to your work. It makes me think

393
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:15,600
Speaker 1: about your recent book The Bullin Trader, because it explores

394
00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 1: the life of Jane Bolin, who's Anne Bolen's sister in law.

395
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:22,360
Speaker 1: And Jane is a very complicated character to be following

396
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:26,159
Speaker 1: for an entire book. She's not really I don't know

397
00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:30,240
Speaker 1: if I would call her a heroine. What inspires you

398
00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:33,680
Speaker 1: to write these women who are not likable or good.

399
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:39,520
Speaker 2: Because I don't believe women who are likable or good.

400
00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 2: To be honest with you, I mean, I myself lead

401
00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 2: a life of playing with purity. Of course, let's establish that,

402
00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:49,719
Speaker 2: but me too, Yes, okay, so we'll establish that. But

403
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 2: I do think if you look at women who are

404
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:55,840
Speaker 2: generally described as good women, I think you often see

405
00:23:55,840 --> 00:24:03,000
Speaker 2: women who are repressed or grand out or performing a

406
00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:07,400
Speaker 2: role that they might be better off doing something else.

407
00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:12,480
Speaker 2: And certainly in the historical context you see the emergence

408
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:15,400
Speaker 2: of the idea of a good woman. We're not born

409
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:19,000
Speaker 2: with that. Society doesn't evolve with that intense sixty six

410
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:23,199
Speaker 2: nobody talks about good women. That comes out of a

411
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:28,800
Speaker 2: huge Puritan pressure in the seventeenth century when the parliamentarians

412
00:24:28,840 --> 00:24:32,120
Speaker 2: take control, and you have this idea that the home

413
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:34,959
Speaker 2: is supposed to be particularly pure, and that women, as

414
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:37,320
Speaker 2: the keepers of the home, had to be particularly pure.

415
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:40,080
Speaker 2: And it runs right the way through the eighteenth century,

416
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:44,280
Speaker 2: through the Enlightenment, through the Romantic movement to say that

417
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:49,359
Speaker 2: women are actually naturally pure, and naturally sexually repressed, and

418
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:52,119
Speaker 2: naturally the guardians of all that is good, and that

419
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:55,520
Speaker 2: men go out into the outside world and behave as

420
00:24:55,560 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 2: they want sexually, and make money and struggle with the

421
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:02,840
Speaker 2: outside world, and they must come home to somewhere that

422
00:25:02,960 --> 00:25:07,040
Speaker 2: is secure and reassuring and pure, and that that is

423
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 2: how the world is. And it's not how the world is,

424
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 2: it's how it happens to be for an incredibly brief

425
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:15,720
Speaker 2: period of time, and it reaches its peak at about

426
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:19,520
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty, and it deteriorates after that because it's unlivable.

427
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:22,679
Speaker 2: But what we're left with is because all of us,

428
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:25,639
Speaker 2: when we think of the history, anyone who hasn't studied

429
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:28,919
Speaker 2: it mostly thinks of the victorians. We mostly think of

430
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 2: about eighteen fifty. So we think that all historical women

431
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 2: are either good women or they're bad women, like scarletor horror.

432
00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 2: And in fact, of course, historical women dress like modern

433
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:46,280
Speaker 2: women today, are a mixture of abilities and desires and

434
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:51,760
Speaker 2: hopes and fears and capacities and the ability to sin

435
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 2: as well.

436
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 1: Do you find these bad women inspiring?

437
00:25:57,320 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 2: Yes, when they are successful.

438
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:01,680
Speaker 1: What does that mean?

439
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 2: I mean? I think personal freedom, especially for women, is

440
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 2: a revolutionary choice, and I think every woman should make

441
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 2: it her priority.

442
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:13,679
Speaker 1: That gave me chills when you said that what in

443
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: you is bubbling that you're writing these women?

444
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:20,679
Speaker 2: I think all my life, I would say, I have

445
00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:26,639
Speaker 2: been conscious that individual freedom is one of the very

446
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:31,119
Speaker 2: few undiluted goods that you can hope for. I was

447
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:35,800
Speaker 2: raised by a widow. My mother lost a very beloved

448
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:39,280
Speaker 2: husband when she was very young, and so I was

449
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 2: raised in the house of women. I had my mother,

450
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 2: and I had my older sister, and so I never

451
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 2: had a man tell me what to do until I

452
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:52,399
Speaker 2: went to a newsroom. And you know how brutally instructed

453
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:54,560
Speaker 2: you are at that point. So the first time a

454
00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:57,400
Speaker 2: man ever raised his voice to me, I was absolutely amazed.

455
00:26:57,480 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 2: Nobody had ever, no man had ever raised his voice

456
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 2: to me before. It was my news editor. He said, Gregor,

457
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:04,440
Speaker 2: if you do that again, I'll push you out the window,

458
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 2: which in those days was banter. In these days now

459
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:14,680
Speaker 2: you're you know, you're putting a formal complaint. So I yes,

460
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:19,719
Speaker 2: the concept of personal freedom has become clearer and clearer

461
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 2: to me, especially in a world where I thought that

462
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:28,640
Speaker 2: the major work of women's liberation had been done by

463
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:33,360
Speaker 2: women before me in the sixties, and as we discover today,

464
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 2: there is still so much oppression and mistreatment of women.

465
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 2: You know, I am appalled, like everybody is appalled, but

466
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:45,359
Speaker 2: I am extra appalled because I thought we had gone

467
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 2: some way to improve. And actually I think we are

468
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 2: as bad as the Victorians in terms of our double standards.

469
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: Really yeah, I.

470
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 2: Mean in the Victorian period, there's a famous experiment by

471
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:06,480
Speaker 2: a Victorian journalist who bought a girl, a virgin, twelve

472
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:09,919
Speaker 2: year old virgin potential links and then wrote about it

473
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:13,840
Speaker 2: and said, there is sexual slavery and trafficking on the

474
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 2: streets of London. And now we know there's sexual slavery

475
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 2: and trafficking in every major city in the Western world.

476
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 2: And I thought, I thought we had resolved that with

477
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:29,920
Speaker 2: the valuing of women and with the movement for women's

478
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:32,879
Speaker 2: rights and women's liberation and so that not.

479
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 1: Do you feel so if one of the major through

480
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: lines is personal liberty personal freedom, did you set out

481
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: years ago trying to solve for that or asking yourself

482
00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: about that, or did that come through years of reading

483
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:52,640
Speaker 1: and writing.

484
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 2: I think it's always been a theme for me because

485
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 2: I think, as I was saying, if you're a nineteen

486
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 2: fifty to I mean, you write from the conventions of

487
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:07,640
Speaker 2: your time, you can't think yourself outside your time. You can,

488
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 2: but it takes years and years and years. And the

489
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 2: old days we used to talk about raising consciousness. You

490
00:29:12,080 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 2: have to raise your own consciousness. So I think, naturally,

491
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:18,440
Speaker 2: if you're a nineteen fifties writer, you are naturally deferential.

492
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 2: I started writing in the nineteen eighties, writing fiction in

493
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:25,480
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties, by which time a lot of that

494
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:29,719
Speaker 2: deference had disappeared and a lot of revolutionary and modern

495
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 2: thinking was completely fashionable. That was how that was how

496
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 2: the young people thought. You know, this is post Rolling Stones.

497
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 2: I mean, there's been a big movement of in a sense,

498
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 2: ideas of individual freedom becoming widespread as part of the

499
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 2: climate that I grew up in. And therefore, of course,

500
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 2: when I was writing about my historical characters, most all

501
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:59,080
Speaker 2: of whom are living their lives before the real crackdown

502
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 2: on women's freedom of the nineteenth century. So naturally I

503
00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 2: was really akin to them because I happened to be

504
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 2: post nineteenth century and they were pre nineteenth century. But

505
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:14,720
Speaker 2: we both had this idea that your individual consciousness and

506
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 2: your individual abilities should be a matter of your own determining.

507
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,480
Speaker 1: You can't think your way out of your own time

508
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:24,800
Speaker 1: is such a powerful statement.

509
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 2: And whenever you read a bad historical novel, you see

510
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 2: how true that is. Because people don't they they literally

511
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:33,719
Speaker 2: come at it and you go like, this is not

512
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 2: a Tudor woman. This is a twentieth first century woman.

513
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:39,200
Speaker 2: But she's got a long dress on. You know, like

514
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:41,080
Speaker 2: that's that's the worst thing.

515
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:44,480
Speaker 1: Oh, that is so interesting. You're right, because you can't

516
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 1: place it. But you feel like, I just don't believe

517
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 1: this character. I don't believe this. Is there anything you do?

518
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:53,160
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that now you are just you're

519
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 1: so entrenched these times, But is there anything that you

520
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 1: do specifically to put yourself in that headspace of an

521
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 1: entirely different era?

522
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 2: I think, as you say, having worked in it so

523
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 2: often that you know, like I know the layout of

524
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 2: Henry Yates palaces. I know them nearly as well as

525
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:16,720
Speaker 2: he did, of course, because I've written about them for

526
00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:18,800
Speaker 2: so very, very long. So I can tell you if

527
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:20,600
Speaker 2: you go in the front door at Hampton Court what

528
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:24,000
Speaker 2: you see in front of you. It's an enormous portrait

529
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:27,920
Speaker 2: of Henry Gate either way, of course, which he put

530
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 2: up himself to overall the visitor. So there's decades of research,

531
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 2: which means that I am very very comfortable, but I

532
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:41,600
Speaker 2: am still very very careful with my language. You don't

533
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:48,040
Speaker 2: realize until you start trying to write believable, say sixteenth

534
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:52,320
Speaker 2: century dialogue, how much your own thinking and how much

535
00:31:52,360 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 2: your own metaphors are modern. So nobody's touch is electric,

536
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 2: of course, because they haven't got electricity yet. There's nothing

537
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:08,400
Speaker 2: about the blood rushing through your heart except how you

538
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:11,440
Speaker 2: feel it, because they haven't discovered the circulation of the

539
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 2: heart yet.

540
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 1: My god, Philliver, that is so difficult.

541
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:22,160
Speaker 2: Yes, it's so interesting, isn't it. And magnetic because we

542
00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 2: haven't discovered magnets yet.

543
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:28,560
Speaker 1: We don't have that word. Yeah, yeah, can you name

544
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: a few more. I'm sorry to nerd out, but I

545
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 1: just think this is so cool.

546
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:37,200
Speaker 2: I mean, you can't be sure about any metaphors or disease,

547
00:32:37,760 --> 00:32:42,320
Speaker 2: so you don't have any suggestion that germ spread. There's

548
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 2: no germ theory, so there's no thing like, you know,

549
00:32:45,280 --> 00:32:49,000
Speaker 2: she caught his feelings like a fever. Obviously, you don't

550
00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:52,440
Speaker 2: have any transport mechanisms, like nobody goes as fast as

551
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 2: a jatplane or anything like that. But so the fastest

552
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,480
Speaker 2: thing that anybody knows would be ag alopin horse.

553
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:03,960
Speaker 1: I know you can see me smiling. Everybody listening can't

554
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:05,960
Speaker 1: see me grinning from ear to ear. But I find

555
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 1: this so fascinating. Do you ever catch yourself or you're

556
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 1: so worsed?

557
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 2: Yes, of course, of course, because you know you tend

558
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:18,960
Speaker 2: to you think. I read a really bad book the

559
00:33:19,040 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 2: other day when it said Catherine Howard looked out of

560
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 2: the window and thought her thoughts. You go like, well,

561
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 2: very good, so she should. But she breathed in the world.

562
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 2: Yes she did, absolutely, she thought who she would think,

563
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 2: and then she thought, I'll think my thoughts. The thing

564
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 2: is is like, of course you are trapped in your

565
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 2: own consciousness as well. So not only are you free

566
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 2: in your own consciousness, but you're trapped in it. You're

567
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 2: in your own time. You are a creature of your time.

568
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 2: And the trick of one of the many tricks of

569
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:51,120
Speaker 2: writing historical fiction is to see what you can leave

570
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:54,720
Speaker 2: behind when you try and go into another world.

571
00:33:56,600 --> 00:34:00,120
Speaker 1: I think your work asks makes people ask themselves questions,

572
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: and so you are leaving a trail for people to

573
00:34:04,280 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 1: think of themselves differently.

574
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 2: I hope. So definitely my intention is that they think

575
00:34:11,160 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 2: of historical women differently, that they don't take the conventional

576
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 2: view of them, that they examine what they know about them.

577
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:23,880
Speaker 2: And people have been very upset in the past if

578
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:27,360
Speaker 2: they think I'm not kind about someone that they like

579
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:30,440
Speaker 2: very much. And it's not that I ever think badly

580
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 2: of anybody. Actually, I think everybody is generally doing the

581
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:38,319
Speaker 2: best they can in a difficult world. Someone like Anne

582
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 2: Boleyn has a very difficult world. She has an impossible

583
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 2: world to negotiate, and partly that's because her ambitions are

584
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 2: entirely new in that world. She is a self made

585
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 2: woman and that's a thrilling thing to record, but you

586
00:34:54,040 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 2: also have to record the downsides of it. You have

587
00:34:56,160 --> 00:35:00,279
Speaker 2: to be honest about what she sacrifices in herself to

588
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 2: bring that gritty determination out and to be that remorseless

589
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,359
Speaker 2: in terms of what it's going to cost her. I mean,

590
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:11,319
Speaker 2: I think I would call her a heroine. I think

591
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 2: she's terrific, but it doesn't mean to say that I

592
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 2: love everything she does.

593
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:22,279
Speaker 1: And that's to me what makes her real, because we

594
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 1: don't love every decision. I don't love every decision I've made.

595
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:29,279
Speaker 2: That's why I talk about bad women. When I talk

596
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:32,080
Speaker 2: about bad women, I always do air quotes. I cannot

597
00:35:32,120 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 2: imagine a character who is undiluted bad. You know, it's

598
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 2: just not part of a human condition. We are all mixtures,

599
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 2: and we all take half baked decisions and change our

600
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:45,840
Speaker 2: minds and revert back to them and want to be

601
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:49,279
Speaker 2: different and reform and fail. We're all doing that all

602
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,719
Speaker 2: the time. That's the human condition. There's no extreme of

603
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 2: behavior that I have ever seen in any historical character.

604
00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:01,400
Speaker 2: Henry the Eighth goes a long way to being, in

605
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 2: my view, a wicked man, but that's at the end

606
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 2: of his life. When he's a young boy. He's absolutely

607
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:13,080
Speaker 2: adorable and so full of ambitions, so full of hope,

608
00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 2: and so idealistic and so clever, and so literally very

609
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:20,600
Speaker 2: very charming. And that's one of the things about history

610
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 2: is it makes you really be aware of the passing

611
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:25,640
Speaker 2: of the years. That young Henry is not the same

612
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 2: person as old Henry, and different standards apply both to him,

613
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 2: and you should apply different standards as his biographer.

614
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:39,960
Speaker 1: I think it's very hard for humans to recognize what

615
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:42,719
Speaker 1: you just said. I find it often when people pass

616
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:45,960
Speaker 1: away that whether they are public figures or not we

617
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:49,480
Speaker 1: paint them with such a broad stroke. I'll give you

618
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:52,960
Speaker 1: an example. My grandfather passed away, and the way my

619
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:58,440
Speaker 1: grandmother talks about him is he was the most incredible husband,

620
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:02,759
Speaker 1: and just all these beautiful words, and he was a

621
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 1: wonderful person, and they fought so much, and he did

622
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:12,799
Speaker 1: some unkind things, and he was a complicated person, just

623
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:16,320
Speaker 1: like everybody else's. One of my favorite definitions of wisdom

624
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: is holding two opposite truths at one time. Yes, absolutely,

625
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 1: And it's one of the things you do so well, well.

626
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:26,319
Speaker 2: Thank you. I mean, it's a very very difficult thing

627
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:31,279
Speaker 2: to do. But I think when you're a novelist, what

628
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:35,640
Speaker 2: you're interested in most is the change of personality and

629
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 2: development and growth. And when I was studying novels years

630
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:43,400
Speaker 2: and years and years ago as a PhD student, it

631
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,600
Speaker 2: seemed to me that when the novel was invented, when

632
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:50,600
Speaker 2: it became really the novel and stopped being just fairytale stories,

633
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:56,320
Speaker 2: what characterized it was the fact that the reader met

634
00:37:56,360 --> 00:38:01,040
Speaker 2: a character at a point of to what you'd now

635
00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 2: call an inciting incident, at a point of change or

636
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 2: challenge or something's about to happen, and then you follow

637
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:09,880
Speaker 2: them through it. And it's not just the things that happen,

638
00:38:10,239 --> 00:38:12,879
Speaker 2: it's not just the events and the adventures, but it's

639
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 2: how they change the personality. So at the end of it,

640
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:20,239
Speaker 2: the person is not just happy. They have not just

641
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:23,280
Speaker 2: found the person they love. They're not just going to

642
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 2: marry and be rich. They have grown and they've developed

643
00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:30,000
Speaker 2: and they have changed. And so whether you're a biographer

644
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:35,360
Speaker 2: in which you're tracing someone from childhood to maturity, or

645
00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 2: whether you're a novelist where you're tracing development, it's the

646
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:43,000
Speaker 2: same task. And that's why it seems to me that

647
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:47,239
Speaker 2: the novel is a wonderful way to write a biography,

648
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 2: because it requires you to step into the inner private world,

649
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:55,400
Speaker 2: which history is really forbidden from.

650
00:38:55,960 --> 00:38:58,839
Speaker 1: Novel is a wonderful way to write a biography. I've

651
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:00,240
Speaker 1: never thought about it that way.

652
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:03,560
Speaker 2: Oh if I think about it that way all the time,

653
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:06,120
Speaker 2: of course, but that's because that's what I'm doing. I mean,

654
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 2: I think it's a more interesting way to write a

655
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:13,440
Speaker 2: biography than a straight biography if you want to know

656
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:18,279
Speaker 2: about the real person inside, or at any rate, a

657
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 2: version of them. I never say this is the real person,

658
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:25,040
Speaker 2: I say this is my person. This is my version

659
00:39:25,080 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 2: of them.

660
00:39:26,560 --> 00:39:28,600
Speaker 1: What does an average day look like for you when

661
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 1: you are writing. I've heard you're very disciplined.

662
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:35,760
Speaker 2: I don't feel very disciplined. I feel extremely self indulgent.

663
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 2: My average day these days is I wake up and

664
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:43,239
Speaker 2: I let my dog out, and then she's allowed to

665
00:39:43,239 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 2: come in and sit on my bed while I write,

666
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:47,719
Speaker 2: and I have a cup of tea, and I write

667
00:39:47,719 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaker 2: in bed for a couple of hours before I even

668
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:54,960
Speaker 2: get up. Then I get up and I walk the

669
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 2: same beloved dog. Mostly this is right. This is my

670
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:00,399
Speaker 2: dog's average day, really, And then I I come into

671
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 2: my study and I write for another couple of hours,

672
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 2: and then I take a break at lunchtime and I

673
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:08,920
Speaker 2: do anything that I have to do around my house garden,

674
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 2: which is very little housework. And then I work for

675
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:15,520
Speaker 2: a couple of hours in the afternoon. But that might

676
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:18,799
Speaker 2: be just reading. There's a limit, I believe, well, I

677
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:21,720
Speaker 2: know for me, there's a limit to how much creative

678
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:27,880
Speaker 2: writing I can do in a day without becoming well exhausted.

679
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 2: But also if I start dreaming about the characters, or

680
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,280
Speaker 2: I start dreaming that I am one of the characters,

681
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:35,880
Speaker 2: then I know I've been working too hard, and I

682
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:40,879
Speaker 2: genuinely believe that my consciousness isn't sure where we are.

683
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 2: So if I've spent six hours of the day in

684
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:51,319
Speaker 2: the Tudor Court, then I think at nighttime when I

685
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:53,719
Speaker 2: come to dream, my brain is going like we spent

686
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 2: all down the Tudor Court. We'll dream about the Tudor Court.

687
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:58,359
Speaker 2: And I know that's not good. That's not good. My

688
00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:01,320
Speaker 2: brain needs to know that I'm actually living in the

689
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:03,800
Speaker 2: modern world, in the real world, in my real house.

690
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:18,759
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny to hear you speak about your

691
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:21,759
Speaker 1: day and how hard you work, because one thing I

692
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:24,839
Speaker 1: love about your story is that you've described yourself as

693
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:27,840
Speaker 1: kind of a rebel at school. I was reading that

694
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:30,680
Speaker 1: you got an E in your history A level so

695
00:41:31,480 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: for Americans, and a level is like an ap course.

696
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:36,839
Speaker 2: It was the closest thing you can get to it

697
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:40,120
Speaker 2: and scrape through. Yeah, I wouldn't have gone to university

698
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 2: on my grades that I came out of school with.

699
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:46,000
Speaker 2: I got into university as a professional because I got

700
00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:50,719
Speaker 2: into journalism college, trained as a journalist, worked as a journalist,

701
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,640
Speaker 2: and then got to university. They didn't teach history at

702
00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 2: my school. In my school days, in a way that

703
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:02,000
Speaker 2: anybody would have any genuine interest in. It's military history,

704
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:08,080
Speaker 2: it's classical history, Roman history, it's mostly set in Europe.

705
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 2: It could not have been further away from the fifteen

706
00:42:12,040 --> 00:42:14,239
Speaker 2: year old girl I was growing up in Bristol. It

707
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 2: couldn't have been more remote. And one of the things

708
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:20,240
Speaker 2: that my life's work has been is to say to people,

709
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 2: this history is your history. This is your mother's mothers, mothers,

710
00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 2: mothers mothers. The way we think now is a result

711
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:30,920
Speaker 2: of the fact that we are at this stage in

712
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 2: our history, and therefore we are made by our history.

713
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:38,640
Speaker 2: And when we understand how much, for instance, our belief

714
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 2: in the innate, purity and caring and loving nature of

715
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:45,839
Speaker 2: women comes from the lectures that were given to women

716
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 2: in the seventeenth century, then you go like, I now

717
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:52,280
Speaker 2: know why I don't feel like I fit this mold.

718
00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:56,080
Speaker 2: It's not that I'm wrong, it's that the image is

719
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:59,040
Speaker 2: that of a seventeenth century puritan. Of course I don't

720
00:42:59,080 --> 00:42:59,400
Speaker 2: fit it.

721
00:43:00,719 --> 00:43:03,280
Speaker 1: But I've heard you say that you're not necessarily giving

722
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:08,279
Speaker 1: women back their voices, So I am curious who you're

723
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 1: writing for instead.

724
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 2: Because I think women have their voices, they have their

725
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:16,279
Speaker 2: voices loud and clear, and all around the world they're

726
00:43:16,280 --> 00:43:19,680
Speaker 2: speaking up. And that's you know that it's not in

727
00:43:19,719 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 2: my gift. It's not in anybody's gift. Your voice is

728
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 2: your own gift. You know, you use it yourself. Yeah,

729
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:29,240
Speaker 2: I mean, I think what I am, what I am

730
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:34,440
Speaker 2: genuinely doing, is I am giving women back their stories.

731
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:38,799
Speaker 2: And you know, there's that famous thing. It was at

732
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:42,240
Speaker 2: my school they used to say, now, let us praise

733
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:45,919
Speaker 2: famous men and our fathers, but begat us. And it's

734
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 2: not a bad thing to say, let us praise famous

735
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:53,319
Speaker 2: women and our mothers. That begat us. Because I am

736
00:43:53,320 --> 00:43:56,319
Speaker 2: my mother's daughter, just as every woman in the world is.

737
00:43:56,600 --> 00:44:00,839
Speaker 2: And because we have our descent of goods through the

738
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:05,759
Speaker 2: patrilineal line does not mean that our mother's contribution is

739
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:07,160
Speaker 2: not hugely significant.

740
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: Absolutely. What do you think the biggest lie history has

741
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:13,320
Speaker 1: told us about women?

742
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:16,760
Speaker 2: I think the biggest lie is that you're not in history.

743
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 2: And it's clearly not true, because if you look at

744
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 2: the published histories, we are there, not described fairly or

745
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:28,279
Speaker 2: accurately at all, but we are there. And the other

746
00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 2: thing is that that led women onto thinking that they

747
00:44:32,239 --> 00:44:35,799
Speaker 2: do not do historical acts, or that their great great

748
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:39,160
Speaker 2: great great grandmothers did not do historical acts. In fact,

749
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:44,320
Speaker 2: women are in history, and they do enormously interesting, historical,

750
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:50,160
Speaker 2: historically recorded things in every century. But by having this

751
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:55,360
Speaker 2: kind of zoomed out worldview where you only see generals

752
00:44:55,360 --> 00:44:59,040
Speaker 2: and politicians and kings, we then get a history, a

753
00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:02,720
Speaker 2: very lazy history, which says women don't do historical acts,

754
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:04,480
Speaker 2: they just stay home and look after babies.

755
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: Presumably you've had such a great number of successes, I

756
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 1: am curious what other stories you're feeling drawn to. What

757
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 1: is next for you?

758
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 2: Next on the list, I'm going to write a novel

759
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:22,040
Speaker 2: about Catherine Willoughby, who was the ward of Charles Brandon.

760
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:26,760
Speaker 2: Charles Brandon was Henry Yates's best friend ever and married

761
00:45:27,120 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 2: Princess Mary, Henry Yates's sister. So she's right in that

762
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:35,720
Speaker 2: royal court area, and Charles Brandon marries her when she's twelve,

763
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:40,360
Speaker 2: so it's a very very very big discrepancy of age.

764
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 2: He's nearly fifty. Wow. I'm interested in writing that and

765
00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:50,000
Speaker 2: trying to withhold my modern judgment about that and trying

766
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 2: to write it with a medieval view, but at the

767
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:57,680
Speaker 2: same time knowing that she thought that a very great

768
00:45:57,719 --> 00:46:01,920
Speaker 2: discrepancy between a husband and mine life and early marriage

769
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:06,319
Speaker 2: was bad for young women. So the management of my

770
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 2: own feelings that that's tantamount of abuse and Katherine Willoughby's

771
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:15,280
Speaker 2: absolute acceptance of it, but her belief that it isn't

772
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:19,240
Speaker 2: good for a young girl, I think that's a very

773
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:23,879
Speaker 2: it's a very delicate balance, and done well, I think

774
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:26,799
Speaker 2: it will be quite insightful. So I'm working on her.

775
00:46:27,239 --> 00:46:34,840
Speaker 2: I'm working on a play about Jaketa Duchess Bedford, who

776
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:37,680
Speaker 2: is the heroine of my novel Lady of the Rivers.

777
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:41,800
Speaker 2: And I'm doing something which is absolutely a secret but

778
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:44,279
Speaker 2: I can't tell you about. But like, I just want

779
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 2: you to know. I've got a secret, got massive secrets.

780
00:46:48,400 --> 00:46:49,400
Speaker 2: I'm not going to tell you about that.

781
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,360
Speaker 1: And hell, that's like when people on Instagram say something's

782
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:56,200
Speaker 1: coming dot dot dot, but they don't tell us what's coming.

783
00:46:58,000 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 2: You have to invite me back.

784
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you have an open chair on this podcast.

785
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 2: Thank you. All right, I'll come back, and I'm ready

786
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 2: to share my secret. It's like, it's pretty exciting to

787
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 2: get to my stage of my career and still have

788
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 2: a secret. You know usually everybody knows everything about you.

789
00:47:17,200 --> 00:47:19,279
Speaker 1: Yes, And I can see your face lit up when

790
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:22,319
Speaker 1: you shared it with me, So there's something brewing. And

791
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:25,160
Speaker 1: I do think that tension that you mentioned with Catherine

792
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:29,920
Speaker 1: Willoughby is fascinating. I immediately personalized it and thought of

793
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:33,239
Speaker 1: my own life in terms of what I accept but

794
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:36,759
Speaker 1: also would not recommend for somebody else's life. I think

795
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 1: we all have pieces of that, yes.

796
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:42,359
Speaker 2: And I think also it's very timely obviously that we're

797
00:47:42,440 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 2: very concerned about protecting the innocence of children, but that

798
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:50,720
Speaker 2: in itself is a historical development that in the medieval

799
00:47:50,719 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 2: world there was no concept right the innocence of children

800
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:56,240
Speaker 2: that had to be protected at all. Too. I think

801
00:47:56,360 --> 00:48:00,359
Speaker 2: and work in that as a feminist and very sensetively

802
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:04,120
Speaker 2: as a humanist, as someone who cares about people's feelings.

803
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:06,719
Speaker 2: I think that's going to be that's going to be

804
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:10,680
Speaker 2: difficult to do, but very interesting to do as well.

805
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:14,359
Speaker 1: Philippa. Every week I ask our guests what they've bookmarked,

806
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 1: and it can be a fun fact or a quote

807
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:20,799
Speaker 1: or something you've saved on your Instagram or texted your

808
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 1: best friend about. What has Philippa Gregory bookmarked this.

809
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:30,280
Speaker 2: Week, I was reading a book in order to recommend it.

810
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 2: It's a new book, it's not published. It by Nandini

811
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 2: Das and it's called This Little World, a New History

812
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:39,760
Speaker 2: of Tudor and Stuart England. And actually it's about Tudor

813
00:48:39,800 --> 00:48:44,880
Speaker 2: and Stuart migration into England. And it's very beautifully written.

814
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 2: And the thing that really caught my eye. And I

815
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:52,560
Speaker 2: didn't bookmark it because I'm a hard copy reader, so

816
00:48:52,600 --> 00:48:55,480
Speaker 2: I doggied it, which people hate you doing. And I

817
00:48:55,520 --> 00:48:57,560
Speaker 2: scribbled in the margin. And I can do that because

818
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:00,439
Speaker 2: it's my book and I don't care. Are you're talking

819
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 2: about immigrants, she says. They appear in the archives not

820
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:10,120
Speaker 2: just as petitioners or defendants, but as neighbors, lenders, translators,

821
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:14,120
Speaker 2: wives and widows, friends and lovers. Their presence slowly became

822
00:49:14,239 --> 00:49:16,919
Speaker 2: part of the civic and political life of the nation.

823
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:21,280
Speaker 2: Even those who vanished from the record left behind traces

824
00:49:21,320 --> 00:49:24,920
Speaker 2: in the skills, tradition, and habits that have endured. They

825
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:27,680
Speaker 2: may be hard to follow, or we can see their

826
00:49:27,719 --> 00:49:30,960
Speaker 2: presence woven through the fabric of the world. They helped

827
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:35,319
Speaker 2: to make every scrap of art and poetry from this

828
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:39,080
Speaker 2: time the way people thought about the world, the fashions

829
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:41,719
Speaker 2: they wore, the food they ate, the flowers they grew

830
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:45,800
Speaker 2: in their gardens. All of it pulses with the restless

831
00:49:45,960 --> 00:49:48,240
Speaker 2: energy of that in between space.

832
00:49:49,640 --> 00:49:52,480
Speaker 1: I feel like I just was at a front row

833
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:54,720
Speaker 1: at a John bon Jovi concert, Like I can't believe

834
00:49:54,719 --> 00:49:58,120
Speaker 1: I got red tea read. I can't believe I sat

835
00:49:58,160 --> 00:49:59,880
Speaker 1: through a live reading from you that was so fe

836
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:04,879
Speaker 1: beautiful and I also deeply understand why that cut your eyes.

837
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:07,320
Speaker 1: So much of that is woven into your work.

838
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:11,280
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, and the world we live in today.

839
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:16,319
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, So before you come back and tell us

840
00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:19,439
Speaker 1: your secret, hopefully in a few months, maybe a year,

841
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:22,560
Speaker 1: we'll see. You're nodding, how long do you think?

842
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 2: I think six months I should be able to tell

843
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 2: you my secret.

844
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:28,840
Speaker 1: Okay, so in six months you'll be back. But before

845
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:31,160
Speaker 1: you leave us, I want to do something called speed

846
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:34,800
Speaker 1: read with you, which is where we put sixty seconds

847
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:37,360
Speaker 1: on the clock and see how many rapid fire literary

848
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:39,640
Speaker 1: questions you can get through. Are you ready?

849
00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:40,960
Speaker 2: I'm ready?

850
00:50:41,239 --> 00:50:45,120
Speaker 1: Okay. What is one literary trope you would ban forever?

851
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:49,560
Speaker 2: Somebody is starting a novel by saying the babies cry

852
00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:51,399
Speaker 2: echoed through the cold corridors of the.

853
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 1: Castle, and one that you'll defend with your life.

854
00:50:55,160 --> 00:50:57,279
Speaker 2: Starting in the middle of a conversation.

855
00:50:57,080 --> 00:50:58,920
Speaker 1: What's a book that you wish you had written?

856
00:50:59,440 --> 00:50:59,879
Speaker 2: Will Fall?

857
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:01,800
Speaker 1: A favorite book to recommend?

858
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 2: A history play by Rodney Bolt.

859
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:05,719
Speaker 1: What book do you wish you could read again for

860
00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:06,399
Speaker 1: the first time?

861
00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:08,960
Speaker 2: Oh, Dyard Kipling?

862
00:51:09,640 --> 00:51:11,640
Speaker 1: What is the first book that you stayed up all

863
00:51:11,719 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 1: night to finish?

864
00:51:13,000 --> 00:51:13,880
Speaker 2: Little Gray Rabbit?

865
00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:17,920
Speaker 1: What's a book that shaped the way you see the world?

866
00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:20,560
Speaker 2: Germ Angria? The female eunuch?

867
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:23,680
Speaker 1: Who would narrate your memoir audio book?

868
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:26,440
Speaker 2: Oh, Meryl Street? Please?

869
00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:29,280
Speaker 1: The best book that you have never read?

870
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:33,200
Speaker 2: I once, I've never read books, but the book that

871
00:51:33,239 --> 00:51:36,279
Speaker 2: I couldn't finish was Ulysses James Joyce.

872
00:51:36,600 --> 00:51:39,480
Speaker 1: And my last one is the book you gift most.

873
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:44,760
Speaker 2: Often, Nigel bolk In my own executioner, Philip.

874
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 1: But I have savored every single second with you, and

875
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 1: I love learning from you, I love reading your work.

876
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful that it exists, and I really think

877
00:51:58,120 --> 00:52:00,760
Speaker 1: that you have had such an impact on our co memory.

878
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:04,640
Speaker 1: So thank you for all of the hours of unseen

879
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 1: research and difficulty that goes into each novel. I speak

880
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 1: on behalf of so many people when I say we

881
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:13,479
Speaker 1: are so grateful for you.

882
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:17,440
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

883
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:23,839
Speaker 1: Okay, friends, Before we wrap today's episode, I'm bringing back

884
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:27,600
Speaker 1: our monthly comfort segment from Cotton. It's called the book nok.

885
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:36,080
Speaker 1: As we ease into March and the start of spring,

886
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:39,320
Speaker 1: longer days, a little more light, maybe even that first

887
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:41,840
Speaker 1: warm breeze through an open window, it feels like the

888
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:44,520
Speaker 1: perfect time to talk about the small rituals that make

889
00:52:44,560 --> 00:52:47,680
Speaker 1: reading feel just right. Cotton is at the heart of

890
00:52:47,840 --> 00:52:51,040
Speaker 1: so many of these everyday comforts, whether it's your favorite

891
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:54,239
Speaker 1: breathable tea layered under a sweater at the airport, the

892
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:57,239
Speaker 1: soft scarf you travel with, or the crisp button down

893
00:52:57,360 --> 00:53:00,239
Speaker 1: that somehow makes you feel put together even after a

894
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:03,919
Speaker 1: long flight. Cotton grounds us in comfort wherever we are,

895
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:06,320
Speaker 1: which makes it the perfect companion for a good book.

896
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:11,480
Speaker 1: Let's hear from another Bookmark listener sharing their ideal reading setup.

897
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:14,480
Speaker 3: Hi, Danielle high Bookmarked.

898
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:20,760
Speaker 4: This is Malia from Portland, Oregon, and my ideal reading

899
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 4: setup is one that I think many people don't enjoy

900
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 4: or wouldn't call their favorite, which is reading on a plane.

901
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:32,759
Speaker 4: I love getting into a book while I'm on a

902
00:53:32,800 --> 00:53:36,400
Speaker 4: flight because I feel like I have no distractions besides

903
00:53:36,440 --> 00:53:38,120
Speaker 4: my fellow travelers, and.

904
00:53:38,080 --> 00:53:39,600
Speaker 3: I can really lock in.

905
00:53:39,719 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 4: And as a fast reader, I have often finished an

906
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:44,280
Speaker 4: entire book on a plane.

907
00:53:44,719 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 3: So that's kind of why I love reading on the plane.

908
00:53:49,160 --> 00:53:52,319
Speaker 1: Malia, I love this so much. There's something kind of

909
00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: magical about being suspended between places. Nowhere to be, no

910
00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:59,840
Speaker 1: laundry to switch over, no emails to answer, just you,

911
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 1: your seat and a story. That feeling of buckling in,

912
00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:05,160
Speaker 1: tucking your bag under the seat, wrapping up in the

913
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:08,399
Speaker 1: soft cotton layer and realizing you have a few uninterrupted

914
00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 1: hours to just read. Oh that's a gift. And finishing

915
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:15,840
Speaker 1: the entire book before landing honestly elite energy. I aspire

916
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:18,800
Speaker 1: to that level of focus. I think sometimes our perfect

917
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:22,239
Speaker 1: reading ritual isn't the picturesque one. Sometimes it's the one

918
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:25,840
Speaker 1: that simply works. A breathable cotton tea, a cozy sweatshirt,

919
00:54:26,239 --> 00:54:29,360
Speaker 1: maybe a cotton eyemask on's the capin lights, dim comfort

920
00:54:29,360 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 1: that travels with you wherever you're headed this spring. So friends,

921
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:36,640
Speaker 1: keep your ideal reading setups coming. Are you reading in

922
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: a sunny park now that the weather's warming up, on

923
00:54:39,320 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 1: your porch in a cotton sweater on a plane at

924
00:54:41,640 --> 00:54:44,400
Speaker 1: thirty thousand feet like Malia, Take me right into your

925
00:54:44,400 --> 00:54:47,400
Speaker 1: perfect reading ritual. Leave me a voicemail at five zero

926
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:50,360
Speaker 1: one two nine to one three three seven nine, or

927
00:54:50,440 --> 00:54:53,000
Speaker 1: email a voice memo to bookmarked at Reese's book Club

928
00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:56,040
Speaker 1: dot com. Thanks to Cotton for bringing this segment to

929
00:54:56,120 --> 00:54:58,879
Speaker 1: life and for reminding us that comfort and style can

930
00:54:58,880 --> 00:55:01,279
Speaker 1: go hand in hand, whether you're at home or in

931
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:04,640
Speaker 1: ceat fourteen A. Don't forget to check the tag for Cotton.

932
00:55:05,040 --> 00:55:06,600
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more, head to the

933
00:55:06,600 --> 00:55:17,200
Speaker 1: fabric off OurLives dot com. If you want a little

934
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 1: bit more from us, come hang with us on socials.

935
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:23,000
Speaker 1: We're at Reese's book Club on Instagram, serving up books,

936
00:55:23,360 --> 00:55:27,160
Speaker 1: vibes and behind the scenes magic. And I'm Danielle Robe

937
00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:30,239
Speaker 1: ro b a y. Come say hi and DM me

938
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:32,640
Speaker 1: And if you want to go nineties on us, you

939
00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:35,240
Speaker 1: can call us. Okay, so our phone line is open,

940
00:55:35,520 --> 00:55:37,839
Speaker 1: so call us now at five zero one two nine

941
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:41,480
Speaker 1: one three three seven nine. That's five zero one two

942
00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:45,200
Speaker 1: nine one three three seven nine. Share your literary hot

943
00:55:45,239 --> 00:55:49,280
Speaker 1: takes your book recommendations. Oh, please share those and questions

944
00:55:49,280 --> 00:55:51,719
Speaker 1: about the monthly pick, or just let us know what

945
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:54,680
Speaker 1: you think about the episode you just heard. And who knows,

946
00:55:54,719 --> 00:55:57,560
Speaker 1: you might just hear yourself in our next episode, so

947
00:55:57,640 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: don't be shy, give us a ring, and of course,

948
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:02,279
Speaker 1: make sure to follow Bookmarked by Reese's book Club on

949
00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:05,960
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

950
00:56:05,960 --> 00:56:10,600
Speaker 1: shows until then, see you in the next chapter. Bookmarked

951
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:13,960
Speaker 1: is a production of Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. It's

952
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:18,800
Speaker 1: executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and me Danielle Robe. Production

953
00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:22,320
Speaker 1: is by ACAST Creative Studios. Our producers are Matty Foley,

954
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:27,040
Speaker 1: Brittany Martinez, and Sarah Schleid. Our production assistant is Avery Loftis.

955
00:56:27,440 --> 00:56:30,279
Speaker 1: Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder are the executive producers for

956
00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:34,200
Speaker 1: Acast Creative Studios. Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the

957
00:56:34,239 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 1: executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Olga Cominwha, Sarah Kernerman, Kristin

958
00:56:39,080 --> 00:56:42,760
Speaker 1: Perla and Ashley Rappaport are associate producers for Reese's book Club.

959
00:56:43,239 --> 00:56:46,200
Speaker 1: Ali Perry and Lauren Hanson are the executive producers for

960
00:56:46,239 --> 00:56:49,960
Speaker 1: iHeart podcasts,