Philippa Gregory Meet the Author

and turn them into valuable products. That is a way forward.

Thank you. Three Sisters, Three Queens,

is A novel of the women who became queens of England,

Scotland and France, and who were condemned to rivalry,

family conflict and a bloody A novelist doesn't have

to invent that story, it was the real story

of the early 16th century, after Katherine of Aragon arrived

as a Tudor bride. Phillippa Gregory has spun The story

of that period in a string of best-selling novels and this is her

latest subject: Three Sisters, Even by 16th century standards

it is a great story. How well do you think this bit

of the whole saga is In a way, it's a really

classic example of fiction and history put together

that the story of Three Sisters, Three Queens is a construct

but what we're actually talking about is the history of Katherine

of Aragon in the relatively early

years of her marriage quite separate his

of his two sisters. But then as a novelist I come

to these histories, and go, like but they actually are sisters,

they know of each other. rise and fall of their success

of their lives and in their kingdoms and in their fertility, compares

and contrast almost exactly. So it's is a very nice

example for me of what you can do in fiction that you

wouldn't necessarily do in history. But of course the history itself,

which hangs over the whole story, your fictional account of it,

is so extraordinary, the fate of nations,

you know, hanging on a on an unexpected death,

whatever it happens to be. It seems to me, I hope this

is not pushing it too far, but it's strangely contemporary

about how the fate of nations can change in the wink of an eye,

whether it's a royal marriage or a I think one of the reasons that

I love the Tudor period so much is that you get these

enormous consequences from the So if you look at the one

person, you really get a way into the history

which is completely fascinating. So you do get this big

national story focussed on, in this instance,

the choice of James of Scotland to marry Margaret, Henry VIII's

sister, which puts And in the end produces the child

that will unify the two countries. Just take us through

the three of them. Because the rivalries that,

that sort of entangled them in the course of a few years

had huge consequences? There's been very much less work

done on the sisters, and almost I really think that

what you see there is an example of the

historical selection, "want that many women

in the record, thank you. "We've got six wives,

let's leave the sisters out of it." Which means you actually,

really, rarely, for the Tudor period,

you have these on told stories. So the stories that we do know

is Katherine of Aragon and she arrives in the novel

as she arrives pretty well in the English court

as a Princess from Spain and immediately

attracts, in my version of events, the jealously and the affronted envy

of Margaret who until then was the top Princess at

the Henry VIII court. And the other girl

in the mix is Mary, Henry's other sister,

younger Famously willful, who

is married off to the very, very old king of France

and recovers from that really disastrous marriage for her,

political marriage, to marry

the man of her choice. So you've got these three very,

very differen stories about princesses who are married to make

the allowances for their family and It's the question that you have come

to know very well over the years, how much liberty do

you feel free to take with the history for

which you have so much affection

and so much respect? I don't take liberty

with the history. I know authors who do and I think

they're right to take whatever But you are dealing

with characters at a depth Where I believe that I'm right

to go into fiction, where I love the process of going

into fiction, is saying, if she did that, she must have been

feeling this or be wanting to be doing this, or this

is an expression of this sort of So I start, the fiction

comes out of the history, but first of all I look at what's

happened, and then I say if somebody behaves

like that, then they You've lived with this

gang, so to speak, I've been married to Henry they VIII

longer than any wife! And of these three women,

the three sisters, the three queens, as you describe them

in the title of the book, which one You say that Katherine

of Aragon because of the marriage to Henry is

the one that we know, whether accurately or not,

which of them attracts you the most? in the sense, which you like best,

is not the same as who is So you've got two

things going on there. I have great affection

for Katherine of Aragon, I think she was

an extraordinary, courageous woman. Margaret, Henry's sister,

lives an amazing life. She's married as a very young woman

to James of Scotland, and then when widowed

she chooses her husband and has to run away

from Scotland, she gets to England,

she divorces him, she marries She's behaving as if she was in

total charge of her own And of course the loss of her first

husband is the fault of the English The loss of her first husband

is planned as a campaign by So you have this terrible

dark side of the sisterhood that they are always

rivals and that it is Katherine of Aragon's campaign that

kills her brother-in-law. You can't read about this events,

whether in straight history or fiction, without a mind-boggling

feeling of everything that subsequently came is

determined by some of these - I think the idea of

history, as in the past is another country,

when you are a historian,

you get this real double view of it. On the one hand you go

like, "yes, it is almost completely separate from our world

and completely different, yet you can see how then the actions then

produce the consequences of today." I mean the whole concept

of nationhood, the way The way England and

Scotland are absolutely committed enemies for centuries

before the unification, a sense really current ideas

which were being worked out then and to which they came

to some conclusions. And the union of the Crowns itself

in 1603, a century or so before the union of

the Parliament, came about really by accident

because of what had happened in the period

you are Absolutely, it's Margaret's

granddaughter's boy. You just go like, this,

and she of course, thinks all the time,

she is Queen of Scotland when Katherine of Aragon is failing to

have an heir, she knows that her boy will be king

of Scotland and king of

England, it's only Henry's decision to marry on until he gets a

male heir, that means that Margaret is not in fact

the mother of the king of

Which explains why the fascination continues.

Phillippa Gregory, author of Three Sisters, Three Queens,

Southerly winds brought warmth across the country today. But it

wasn't all warmer, we had some