The Last Tudor Read online

  Can you please tell us a bit about what you are currently working on?

  I am working on two projects at once and they are both equally fascinating. I am researching and thinking about writing a history of women in Tudor England, very much inspired by my research for the novels, and I am starting a novel, which is going to be the first of a series about a family who will rise from poverty in the 1600s.

  In addition to your writing, you are also involved in charity work. Can you tell us about that? What causes are you interested in and how can your readers contribute if they are inclined to do so?

  I should be very happy if any readers wanted to join with me in a wonderful project in The Gambia—one of the poorest countries in Africa. I have been paying for the digging of wells in the country’s rural primary schools for more than twenty years (ever since I went to The Gambia to research for my novel about slavery, A Respectable Trade). The wells are commissioned in The Gambia by Ismaila Sisay, a retired headmaster who has worked with me on this since the very beginning, and I am proud to call him my friend. He interviews the schools to make sure that they will teach sustainable agriculture and have the support of the village and then he commissions the well digger who comes out with a spade and a bowl and digs a well—it’s that simple. Then we provide a concrete liner for the well and a rope and bucket, and a safety wall and gate. Then the children create a market garden around the well and learn to grow their own food, and have water to drink and vegetables at lunchtime. We’ve done some big wells, but most of the wells go down about 50 feet and cost only $600. I send my money for new wells to be dug every quarter, and I am so happy when anyone helps me by making a contribution. You can see more about our work on my website—click on the Gardens for The Gambia button where you can donate online, or, you can send a check to Gardens for The Gambia, PO Box 165, North Yorkshire, UK TS9 7WX.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Philippa Gregory is the author of many bestselling novels, including The Other Boleyn Girl, and is a recognized authority on women’s history. Her work has been adapted for the screen in The Other Boleyn Girl movie and the critically acclaimed Starz miniseries The White Queen and The White Princess. Her most recent novel is The Last Tudor. She graduated from the University of Sussex and received a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, where she is a Regent. She holds two honorary degrees from Teesside University and the University of Sussex. She is a fellow of the universities of Sussex and Cardiff and was awarded the 2016 Harrogate Festival Award for Contribution to Historical Fiction. She welcomes visitors to her website, PhilippaGregory.com.

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  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  History

  The Women of the

  Cousins’ War:

  The Duchess, The Queen

  and the King’s Mother

  The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels

  The Lady of the Rivers

  The Red Queen

  The White Queen

  The Kingmaker’s Daughter

  The White Princess

  The Constant Princess

  Three Sisters, Three Queens

  The King’s Curse

  The Other Boleyn Girl

  The Boleyn Inheritance

  The Taming of the Queen

  The Queen’s Fool

  The Virgin’s Lover

  The Other Queen

  Order of Darkness Series

  Changeling

  Stormbringers

  Fools’ Gold

  The Wideacre Trilogy

  Wideacre

  The Favored Child

  Meridon

  The Tradescants

  Earthly Joys

  Virgin Earth

  Modern Novels

  Alice Hartley’s Happiness

  Perfectly Correct

  The Little House

  Zelda’s Cut

  Short Stories

  Bread and Chocolate

  Other Historical Novels

  The Wise Woman

  Fallen Skies

  A Respectable Trade

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  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ablon, Joan. Little People in America: The Social Dimensions of Dwarfism. New York: Praeger, 1984.

  Amt, Emilie, ed. Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook. New York and London: Routledge, 1993.

  Baldwin, David. Henry VIII’s Last Love: The Extraordinary Life of Katherine Willoughby, Lady-in-Waiting to the Tudors. Stroud, UK: Amberley, 2015.

  Borman, Tracy. Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen. London: Jonathan Cape, 2009.

  Cole, Mary Hill. The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.

  de Lisle, Leanda. The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey. London: HarperPress, 2008.

  Doran, Susan. Elizabeth I and Her Circle. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015.

  Goldring, Elizabeth, Faith Eales, Elizabeth Clarke, and Jayne Elisabeth Archer, eds. John Nichols’s The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources. Vol. 1, 1533 to 1571. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. First published 1823.

  Guy, John. My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots. London: Fourth Estate, 2004.

  Hobgood, Allison P., and David Houston Wood, eds. Recovering Disability in Early Modern England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013.

  Ives, Eric. Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

  Mackie, J. D. The Earlier Tudors: 1485–1558. Oxford: Clarendon, 1952.

  Marshall, Rosalind K. Mary I. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1993.

  Plowden, Alison. Lady Jane Grey and the House of Suffolk. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985.

  ———. Lady Jane Grey: Nine Days Queen. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2004.

  Somerset, Anne. Elizabeth I. New ed. London: Fontana, 1992.

  Southworth, John. Fools and Jesters at the English Court. Stroud, UK: History Press, 1998.

  Streitberger, W. R. The Masters of the Revels and Elizabeth I’s Court Theatre. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016.

  Strickland, Agnes. Lives of the Tudor and Stuart Princesses. London: George Bell & Sons, 1888.

  Warnicke, Retha M. Mary, Queen of Scots. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2006.

  Weir, Alison. Children of England: The Heirs of King Henry VIII, 1547–1558. London: Jonathan Cape, 1996.

  ———. Elizabeth the Queen. 1998. Reprint, London: Vintage, 2009.

  ———. The Lost Tudor Princess: A Life of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox. 2015. Reprint, London, Vintage, 2016.

  Whitelock, Anna. Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen’s Court. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

  ONLINE

  Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, vols. 1–23. BHO: British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/search/series/cal-state-papers—foreign.

  Lady Jane Grey Reference Guide, http://www.ladyjanegrey.info/.

  The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com.

  OTHER

  Merton, C. I. “Women Who Served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth: Ladies, Gentlewomen and Maids of the Privy Chamber, 1553–1603.” Unpublished doctoral thes