21st June 2016
My novel Earthly Joys is released today in Italian – Il Giardiniere del Re, my twelfth book published with Sperling & Kupfer. This was my first novel telling the story of a real person's life, and came out three years before The Other Boleyn Girl, in 1998. I discovered John Tradescant in a book on plant collectors and was captivated by the idea of showing the upheaval of the years before the English Civil War through his eyes. It was a dramatic time to live in any walk of life, and John was employed at the very centre of events. This is the next of my books chronologically after the Tudor novels – as the book opens Mary Queen of Scots' son James VI has just inherited the English throne from his cousin Elizabeth I and become James I, England's first Stuart king.
http://www.sperling.it/il-giardiniere-del-re-philippa-gregory/
