Philippa Gregory: By the Book

10th August 2017

First published by the The New York Times on 10th August, 2017.

What books are on your nightstand now?

Oh dear, New York Times, I am English. I don’t have a “nightstand.” The closest thing I know to a nightstand would be a headstand, and I don’t think that’s what you mean. What I do have is an overloaded Kindle, of which the first four titles are: Marilyn Waring’s “Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth”; Ian Mortimer’s “What Isn’t History?”; Anne Ancelin Schützenberger’s “The Ancestor Syndrome: Transgenerational Psychotherapy and the Hidden Links in the Family Tree”; and Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” You can make of that what you like. It seems an odd mix to me, and I am the one that chose them.

What’s the last great book you read?

I really loved Simon Mawer’s “The Glass Room.”

What influences your decisions about which books to read? Word of mouth, reviews, a trusted friend?

Like a lot of people, I find it hard to find books that I want to read. I quite often read several books from the same author once I have found him or her. I read reviews, and they often alert me to a book that I am going to like, and I often get ideas from others, especially other historians and novelists who are as picky as me.

What’s your idea of great summer reading?

I like to read fiction in summer, and I love a book that is set in my holiday area. I am going to the South of France in June, and I shall reread “Tender Is the Night,” by Scott Fitzgerald, which is so wrenchingly nostalgic for a geography and a time and a love so fragile that it could only exist for a moment.

What do you think makes for good historical fiction? Who are your favorite writers in the genre?

What I don’t read is historical fiction in the period that I am writing. Firstly, the characters as described by anyone else drive me mad. The idea of Katherine Howard as a sinless victim or a willful slut is so offensive. Surely we all accept by now that women are never one dimensional? Not apparently if they’re in a hood. Also, I dare not read historical fiction when I am researching the period, in case the author has inserted something wrong or something fictional that may stick in my head. But I suffer terribly from Pen Envy — when I read a good book I wish I had written it, when I read a poor book I am furious that the author has spoiled the story. That’s why I only read very, very good novelists — only with them can I sit back and enjoy the experience.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

I found Jane Wallace’s “Teaching Children to Ride” most educational, and the most helpful fact is that with young children you need two people: one to hold the pony, one to hold the rider. My grandchildren are really pleased that I read this book before I started teaching them. My own children were on and off for years.

Which classic novel did you recently read for the first time?

I recently read the entire Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy. I’d read the first part years ago, but I had forgotten that it goes on for generations. It was completely absorbing and a wonderful example of the narrator changing his view of a character and taking the reader with him.

Which genres do you avoid?

Lord, Lord, tell me! Why does anyone write pornography? If you have the good fortune to find a motif that floats your boat, why would you give it away? Why would you risk it losing its potency? Isn’t good sex so much better than publishing? And why does anyone write lazy, sloppy genre novels? The typing alone is so exhausting — surely if you’re going to undertake 150,000 words, you might as well have something interesting to say? Why do people write crime novels with blindingly obvious murderers? Why do they write love stories with idiotic heroes? (Oh, perhaps see above, re pornography.) Writing should be both individual and universal. Choosing to write a genre novel is like fencing the universe because you are afraid of space.

How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or several simultaneously? Morning or night?

This is incomprehensible in a way — determining how I like to read is like determining how I like to breathe! I read all the time, all day, and I read a chapter of something before I go to sleep at night. I study with hardback books because they are old or specialist, so most of the day in my study I am reading from paper. At lunchtime I read a paper newspaper; I have a ridiculous, old-fashioned prejudice against newspapers online, but somehow it seems perfectly well mannered to read a newspaper at the lunch table where it would seem rude to read from a screen. In the evening, I read fiction on my e-reader, and before I sleep I might read fiction or a history book on my e-reader.

How do you organize your books?

I love my shelves, which are now so many and so loaded that I can call them a library. Sometimes, I think fondly of going the full Dewey. I started buying secondhand hardbacks when I was a student, and so I have all the classics in hardback, and even a couple of inherited first editions. I now buy in book and e-book form, and my books are arranged by author’s name, alphabetically. I have thousands of books now and 554 on my three-year-old Kindle, of which I have read all but a handful. I love the serendipity of the library that puts Austen beside Althusser and E. P. Thompson beside James Thomson, Tennessee Williams beside Raymond. I have created a cozy space in the bookshelves that line the room — for my reading corner and for the one-legged rescue kestrel who lives with me while learning to fly free. She likes a classic hardback under her foot.

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

I have to observe that I have an odd section on witchcraft and a section on skiing history — this is like the fossil record of my research eras.

What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?

My godfather gave me a beautiful illustrated Children’s Book of Poetry when I was about 7, and I started with the limericks and comic poems and went on to the great heart-wrenching story-poems. I kept the book and read them to my children.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?

For memorable glamour — a Georgette Heyer hero. I adored Vidal in “Devil’s Cub.”

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

I was a solitary child, and I read voraciously. I used to borrow four books a week from the library, and this is why I strongly support public libraries now. The books that have stayed with me are the childhood classics: Elizabeth Goudge’s “The Little White Horse,” Rudyard Kipling’s “Stalky & Co.,” Alison Uttley’s “A Traveller in Time.” As a teenager I adored Georgette Heyer and E. M. Forster.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

You would be mad to invite three writers to dinner, but if you had Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker and Christopher Marlowe then the inevitable fight would be interesting.

Whom would you want to write your life story?

Picking my biographer is a game I have recently learned to play. It’s about as much fun as picking out the smuggler when you’re in a line waiting at immigration. (Oh, doesn’t everyone do that?) It came with the horrified recognition that people are now writing about me (Ph.D. theses, blogs, journalism, reviews) and sooner or later someone is going to want to Plumb the Depths. As a highly private person who loves publicly talking about my work but hates talking about my life, this is a nightmare. I was raised by a mother who talked about “Never Doing Dirty Washing in Public” (the capitalization is all hers and has to be heard to be fully enjoyed). Her metaphor is dated — it obviously precedes launderettes — but the message was a powerful one.

So I have chosen my biographer, and she is a young woman writer of talent who understands my horror of my own biography, my love of the novel as a novel, my commitment to my own privacy and my determination that my family and friends who have never been recruited for publicity are not signed up to speak. She is a writer who understands the power of an empty page, of silence. I have given her the task of not writing my biography, and I think she will fulfill it beautifully.

What do you plan to read next?

I am currently reading around the topic of medieval women, with particular attention to how and why women get squeezed out of the marketplace, out of the law, and out of public service, and out of sight. I can’t describe how compelling and fascinating this research is. I am reading a new book every day, and I go to bed with my head whirling with comparisons between women then and now, and with women in different societies around the world. I’m about to read Barbara A. Hanawalt’s “The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London,” Gabrielle Palmer’s “The Politics of Breastfeeding,” Cordelia Fine’s “Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences.” It may not be light, but it is illuminating.