Fairway Galle Lit Fest author profiles – Philippa Gregory

Among the many local and international authors to be featured at the upcoming Fairway Galle Literary Festival (FGLF) 2017 will be New York Time Bestseller and famed historian Philippa Gregory. Best known for her 2001 historical novel The Other Boleyn Girl, Gregory’s interest in Tudor England led her to write her award winning novel which was later adopted as a TV series as well as a major motion picture. In 2002, The Other Boleyn Girl was awarded Romantic Novel of the Year by the Romantic Novelists’s Association in the UK.

Described the AudioFile magazine as the ‘queen of British historical fiction,’ Gregory lives with her family on a small farm in Yorkshire where she tends to her beloved farm animals.

Helen Brown of The Telegraph wrote in 2013 that “Gregory has made an impressive career out of breathing passionate, independent life into the historical noblewomen whose personalities had previously lain flat on family trees, remembered only as diplomatic currency and brood mares.” Calling Gregory’s historical fiction entertainingly speculative, Brown added that those tempted to sneer should note that Gregory had never claimed otherwise and her writing comes with lashings of romantic licence.

A 2011 short story written by Gregory titled “Why Holly Berries are as Red as Roses” for an anthology supporting The Woodland Trust has so far helped the organisation plant approximately 50,000 trees. A paperback re-release is expected sometime this year.

According to Gregory’s official bio, her other great interest is the charity that she founded nearly twenty years ago: Gardens for The Gambia. She has raised funds and paid for almost 200 wells in the primary schools in Gambia, where thousands of school children were able to learn market gardening and grow food to eat in the school gardens watered by the wells. The charity also provides wells for women’s collective gardens and for The Gambia’s only agricultural college, at Njawara. 

Philippa graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in History, and received a PhD in 18th century literature from the University of Edinburgh. In 2008 Edinburgh made her the university’s Alumna of the Year. She holds an honorary degree from Teesside University and is a fellow of the Universities of Sussex and Cardiff, and a Regent for the University of Edinburgh. 

Her love for history and commitment to historical accuracy are the hallmarks of her writing. She also reviews for The Washington Post, the LA Times, and for UK newspapers, and is a regular broadcaster on television and radio. She posts regularly to her large following on Facebook and Twitter. 

Philippa is a patron of The UK Chagos Support Association, which supports the Chagos islanders in their struggle against British injustice. The people of Chagos were displaced by the British government when they cleared the archipelago in the Indian Ocean of its inhabitants in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for an American airbase. Gregory often speaks about the Chagossians’ plight and lobbies the government to take action.