Overview

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ‘A lasting work of social history’ THE TIMES ‘A genuinely new history of our nation’ DAN JONES ‘This celebration of women is a triumph of popular history’ SPECTATOR 'Philippa Gregory uses all her bestseller skills to weave a narrative with pace' ANTONIA FRASER FROM THE MULTI-MILLION BESTSELLING HISTORICAL NOVELIST COMES THE CULMINATION OF HER LIFE’S WORK • Did you know that there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry? • That the Peasant’s Revolt was started and propelled by women, protesting a tax on women? • Or that celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin believed not just that women were naturally inferior to men but that they’d evolve to become ever more inferior? These are just a few of the startling findings you will learn from reading Philippa Gregory’s Normal Women. In this ambitious and ground-breaking book, she tells the story of our nation over 900 years, but for the very first time women – some fifty per cent of the population – are no longer invisible in this history of England, but are at its beating heart. Using research skills honed in her work as one of our foremost historical novelists, Gregory trawled through court records to find highway women, beggars and shepherdesses, through newspapers and diaries to find murderers and brides, housewives and pirates, female husbands and hermits. The ‘normal women’ you will meet in her pages went to war, ploughed the fields, campaigned, wrote, and loved. They rode in jousts, flew Spitfires, issued their own currency and built ships, corn mills and houses as part of their everyday lives They committed crimes, or treason, worshipped many gods, cooked and nursed, invented things and rioted. A lot. They built our society to be as diverse and varied as the women themselves. They are there in the archives – if you look – and they made our history. ‘You’ll lose count of the number of things you learn about women and their skewed place in history … the book reframes the past … an essential read’ INDEPENDENT, FIVE-STAR REVIEW

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9780008601706

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Reviews

EARLY PRAISE FOR NORMAL WOMEN ‘A brilliant, essential read … full of surprises … you’ll lose count of the number of things you learn about women and their skewed place in history as you read Philippa Gregory’s stunning Normal Women … The book reframes the past by telling the important stories of women that have been left out by so many male historians and diarists who, as she remarks, simply “amplified” themselves’ INDEPENDENT, five-star review ‘Gregory’s theme is that although women have always been regarded as naturally inferior, in reality they make the world go round. They are the “healthy, strong, intelligent, spiritual and sexual” beings who did everything: nurtured families, farms and businesses, dug graves, birthed babies, brought in harvests, staffed factories, led riots and held communities together…Gregory has the novelist’s eye for the quirky and the vivid; the wryness of a confident narrator. Normal Womenis a lasting work of social history’ THE TIMES, BOOK OF THE WEEK ‘Gregory has always put women centre stage in her historical fiction but this new nonfiction work strives to restore them to their rightful place in history, and in so doing radically reframe our national story. To an impressive extent, it succeeds’ OBSERVER ‘Philippa Gregory has been working on this book for more than 10 years, women have been waiting for this gratifying and informative acknowledgment for a thousand’ ADELE PARKS, PLATINUM MAGAZINE ‘Normal Women is lively, timely and gloriously energetic. Each page bursts with life, and every chapter swirls with personalities left out of traditional narratives of Britain’s past. Philippa Gregory has produced something rare and wonderful: a genuinely new history of our nation, with women at its beating heart’ DAN JONES

PRAISE FOR PHILIPPA GREGORY: ‘Gregory has popularised Tudor history perhaps more than any other living fiction writer…all of her books feature strong, complex women, doing their best to improve their lives in worlds dominated by men’ Sunday Times 'It would be hard to make history more entertaining, lively or engaging' Sunday Express 'Rollicking, page-turning stuff' Metro 'Entrancing' Telegraph ‘Engrossing . . . bright, lyrical’ The Washington Post

PRAISE FOR PHILIPPA GREGORY: 'Gregory has popularised Tudor history perhaps more than any other living fiction writer...all of her books feature strong, complex women, doing their best to improve their lives in worlds dominated by men' Sunday Times 'It would be hard to make history more entertaining, lively or engaging' Sunday Express 'Rollicking, page-turning stuff' Metro 'Entrancing' Telegraph 'Engrossing . . . bright, lyrical' The Washington Post

Author Information

DR PHILIPPA GREGORY studied history at the University of Sussex and was awarded a PhD by the University of Edinburgh where she is a Regent and was made Alumna of the Year in 2009. She holds an honorary degree from Teesside University, and is a fellow of the Universities of Sussex and Cardiff. Philippa is a member of the Society of Authors and in 2016, was presented with the Outstanding Contribution to Historical Fiction Award by the Historical Writers' Association. In 2018, she was awarded an Honorary Platinum Award by Neilsen for achieving significant lifetime sales across her entire book output. In 2021, she was awarded a CBE for services to literature and to her charity Gardens for the Gambia, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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