Philippa Gregory

Philippa Gregory has been called the ‘Queen of Historical Fiction’. The English royal court has inspired many of her best-selling titles, and she’s written sixteen novels about the Plantagenets and Tudors. One of them – The Other Boleyn Girl – became a BBC TV drama and a Hollywood movie starring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman. This success probably surprised her A level teachers: she says she found history ‘insanely boring’ at school, but her passion was fired at university. She’s also written non-fiction, notably seeking the stories of what she calls ‘normal women’ over 900 years. More recently she’s returned to the Tudors, with a novel called Boleyn Traitor, focussing on the intrigue surrounding Anne’s sister-in-law, Jane. Her music choices include Mozart, Philip Glass, Scott Joplin and the Mazurka from Coppelia by Leo Delibes. Producer: Katy Hickman

You can listen to Philippa Gregory online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Philippa Gregory is an episode from Private Passions by BBC.

This episode is 55:59 long.

This episode was published on Feb 15, 2026.

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