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.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Philippa-Gregory
/TouchstoneBooks
@TouchstoneBooks
@TouchstoneBooks
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
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
* * *
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
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
is, 1992.
GARDENS FOR THE GAMBIA
Philippa Gregory visited The Gambia, one of the driest and poorest countries of sub—Saharan Africa, in 1993 and paid for a well to be hand dug in a village primary school at Sika. Now—more than two hundred wells later—she continues to raise money and commission wells in village schools, in community gardens, and in The Gambia’s only agricultural college. She works with her representative in The Gambia, headmaster Ismaila Sisay, and their charity now funds pottery and batik classes, beekeeping and adult literacy programmes.
GARDENS FOR THE GAMBIA is a registered charity in the UK and a registered NGO in The Gambia. Every donation, however small, goes to The Gambia without any deductions. If you would like to learn more about the work that Philippa calls “the best
thing that I do,” visit her website www.PhilippaGregory.com and click on GARDENS FOR THE GAMBIA, where you can make a donation and join with Philippa in this project.
“Every well we dig provides drinking water for a school of about 600 children, and waters the gardens where they grow vegetables for the school dinners. I don’t know of a more direct way to feed hungry children and teach them to farm for their future.”
Philippa Gregory
Touchstone
An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Levon Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Touchstone hardcover edition August 2017
TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Jacket Design by Lauren Peters-Collaer
Jacket Art © Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gregory, Philippa, author.
Title: The last Tudor / Philippa Gregory.
Description: First Touchstone hardcover edition. | New York : Touchstone, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017017009| ISBN 9781476758763 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781476758787 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Great Britain—Kings and rulers—Succession—Fiction. | Great Britain—History—Tudors, 1485–1603—Fiction. | Grey, Jane, Lady, 1537–1554—Fiction. | Queens—Great Britain—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION /Historical. | FICTION / General. | FICTION / Suspense. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction. | Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6057.R386 L37 2017 | DDC 823/.914—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017009
ISBN 978-1-4767-5876-3
ISBN 978-1-4767-5878-7 (ebook)
The Last Tudor Page 53