Audiobooks by Philippa Gregory

Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History

A NEW STATESMEN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ‘A lasting work of social history’ THE TIMES ‘A genuinely new history of our nation’ DAN JONES ‘This celebration of women is a triumph of popular history’ SPECTATOR FROM THE MULTI-MILLION BESTSELLING HISTORICAL NOVELIST COMES THE CULMINATION OF HER LIFE’S WORK - Did you know that there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry? - That the Peasant’s Revolt was started and propelled by women, protesting a tax on women? - Or that celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin believed not just that women were naturally inferior to men but that they’d evolve to become ever more inferior? These are just a few of the startling findings you will learn from reading Philippa Gregory’s Normal Women. In this ambitious and ground-breaking book, she tells the story of our nation over 900 years, but for the very first time women – some fifty per cent of the population – are no longer invisible in this history of England, but are at its beating heart. Using research skills honed in her work as one of our foremost historical novelists, Gregory trawled through court records to find highway women, beggars and shepherdesses, through newspapers and diaries to find murderers and brides, housewives and pirates, female husbands and hermits. The ‘normal women’ you will meet in her pages went to war, ploughed the fields, campaigned, wrote, and loved. They rode in jousts, flew Spitfires, issued their own currency and built ships, corn mills and houses as part of their everyday lives They committed crimes, or treason, worshipped many gods, cooked and nursed, invented things and rioted. A lot. They built our society to be as diverse and varied as the women themselves. They are there in the archives – if you look – and they made our history. ‘You’ll lose count of the number of things you learn about women and their skewed place in history as you read Philippa Gregory’s stunning Normal Women … the book reframes the past … an essential read’ INDEPENDENT, FIVE-STAR REVIEW

Philippa Gregory (Author), Clare Corbett, James Goode, Joe Jameson, Nneka Okoye, Tania Rodrigues (Narrator)

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The Mammoth Adventure

Princess Florizella may live in a classic fairy-tale world, but she’s no ordinary princess… This third volume in THE PRINCESS RULES series sees the feisty princess take her baby brother and best friend, Bennett, on another round of adventures together. Can they rescue their new-found friend the sea serpent from a travelling circus? And hold back the pirate, Five-fathom Freida. Or will Florizella’s worst fairygodmother prove that in a fairytale world, you really do have to be careful what you wish for?…

Philippa Gregory (Author), Gemma Lawrence (Narrator)

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Dark Tides: The compelling new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Tidelands

Number One bestselling author Philippa Gregory's new historical novel tracks the rise of the Tidelands family in London, Venice and New England. Midsummer Eve 1670. Two unexpected visitors arrive at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the River Thames. The first is a wealthy man hoping to find the lover he deserted twenty-one years before. James Avery has everything to offer, including the favour of the newly restored King Charles II, and he believes that the warehouse's poor owner Alinor has the one thing his money cannot buy - his son and heir. The second visitor is a beautiful widow from Venice in deepest mourning. She claims Alinor as her mother-in-law and has come to tell Alinor that her son Rob has drowned in the dark tides of the Venice lagoon. Alinor writes to her brother Ned, newly arrived in faraway New England and trying to make a life between the worlds of the English newcomers and the American Indians as they move toward inevitable war. Alinor tells him that she knows - without doubt - that her son is alive and the widow is an imposter. Set in the poverty and glamour of Restoration London, in the golden streets of Venice, and on the tensely contested frontier of early America, this is a novel of greed and desire: for love, for wealth, for a child, and for home.

Philippa Gregory (Author), Louise Brealey (Narrator)

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It’s a Prince Thing

The sequel to THE PRINCESS RULES sees rebel princess, Princess Florizella, going on even more adventures, but this time, she also has a little brother in tow… Once upon a time, there was a princess who broke all the rules, and dared to be different… So when that same princess – Florizella – finds a baby boy delivered by stork to her parents’ palace, she is shocked to discover that he will one day be king and inherit her kingdom! For every prince is given a permit which allow them to do whatever they like in the same way that every princess is given a set of rules that they have to live by. As soon as Princess Florizella’s brother is big enough to have adventures, she takes him all over the land, fighting pirates, wrestling with a sea serpent and rehoming a woolly mammoth. Can Florizella prove that girls having rules and boys having permits isn’t right? And that princes and princesses, and girls and boys, should be anything that they want to be…

Philippa Gregory (Author), Gemma Lawrence (Narrator)

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The Princess Rules

Princess Florizella may live in a classic fairy-tale world, but she's no ordinary princess... These three stories were originally published under the titles Princess Florizella, Princess Florizella and the Wolves and Princess Florizella and the Giant. They were originally dedicated to her daughter but have been reimagined in this edition which she has dedicated to her grandchildren. "Princess Florizella was friends with some of the princesses who had studied the Princess Rules, and behaved just as the Rules said they should. Florizella thought their hair was lovely: so golden and so very long. And their clothes were nice: so richly embroidered. And their shoes were delightful: so tiny and handmade in silk. But their days bored her to death..." Instead, Princess Florizella rides her horse, Jellybean, all over the kingdom, having adventures of her own...

Philippa Gregory (Author), Daisy Bevan (Narrator)

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Tidelands

THE BRAND NEW SERIES FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR England 1648. A dangerous time for a woman to be different . . . Midsummer's Eve, 1648, and England is in the grip of civil war between renegade King and rebellious Parliament. The struggle reaches every corner of the kingdom, even to the remote Tidelands - the marshy landscape of the south coast. Alinor, a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run, and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing that she is leading disaster into the heart of her life. Suspected of possessing dark secrets in superstitious times, Alinor's ambition and determination mark her out from her neighbours. This is the time of witch-mania, and Alinor, a woman without a husband, skilled with herbs, suddenly enriched, arouses envy in her rivals and fear among the villagers, who are ready to take lethal action into their own hands. The unmissable read for Summer 2019. Praise for Philippa Gregory: 'Popular historical fiction at its finest, immaculately researched and superbly told' The Times 'Philippa Gregory is truly the mistress of the historical novel. It would be hard to make history more entertaining, lively or engaging' Sunday Express 'Gregory has popularised Tudor history perhaps more than any other living fiction writer . . . All of her books feature strong, complex women, doing their best to improve their lives in worlds dominated by men' Sunday Times 'Immaculate research, pacy narratives and a stubborn insistence that history is not only about men . . . a powerful reminder of how precarious the lives of the Tudor women could be' Daily Mail

Philippa Gregory (Author), Louise Brealey (Narrator)

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Virgin Earth

The sequel to the outstanding historical novel Earthly Joys, by the internationally bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory. A brand new recording - available as an unabridged digital audio edition for the first time. John Tradescant the Younger has inherited his father's unique collection of plants along with his unerring ability to nurture them. But as gardener to Charles I, he confronts an unbearable dilemma when England descends into Civil War. Fleeing from the chaos, John travels to the Royalist colony of Virginia in America. But the virgin land is not uninhabited. John's plant hunting brings him to live with the native people, and he learns to love and respect their way of life just as it is threatened by the colonial settlers. In the new world and the old, the established order is breaking down and every family has to find its own way of surviving. For the Tradescants, through the upheavals of the Commonwealth and the Restoration, this means consolidating their reputations as the greatest gardeners in the country.

Philippa Gregory (Author), David Thorpe (Narrator)

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Earthly Joys

A sweeping historical novel from Philippa Gregory, the internationally bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl. A brand new recording - available as an unabridged digital audio edition for the first time. A traveller in a time of discovery, the greatest gardening pioneer of his day, yet a man of humble birth: John Tradescant's story is a mirror to the extraordinary age in which he lives. As gardener and confidante to Sir Robert Cecil, Tradescant is well placed to observe the social and political changes that are about to sweep through the kingdom. While his master conjures intrigues at Court, Tradescant designs for him the magnificent garden at Hatfield, scouring the known world for ever more wonderful plants: new varieties of fruit and flower, the first horse chestnuts to be cultivated in England, even larches from Russia. Moving to the household of the flamboyant Duke of Buckingham, Tradescant witnesses at first hand the growing division between Parliament and the people; and the most loyal of servants must find a way to become an independent squire.

Philippa Gregory (Author), David Rintoul (Narrator)

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A Respectable Trade

Philippa Gregory (Author), Adjoa Andoh (Narrator)

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The Other Queen

*A stunning new unabridged recording, available on audio download* A dramatic novel of passion, politics and betrayal from the No.1 bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl. 1568. Mary Queen of Scots, fleeing rebellion in her kingdom, is offered a safe haven by Elizabeth I with George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his indomitable wife, Bess of Hardwick. The arrival of an extravagant queen turns the household upside down, as it becomes clear that the visit is a house arrest. Queen Mary makes Bess' hard-won house a centre for unrest and treason, and - perhaps worst of all - Mary Queen of Scots' fabled beauty starts to work on the Tudor loyalist, Bess' own husband, George. The two women fight for their own rights: Mary to regain the crown and the kingdom of Scotland; Bess to win back her husband and houses. A third woman can decide: Elizabeth the First, and nobody knows how far she will go to protect her own safety. With an exclusive afterword written and read by Philippa Gregory, exploring the inspiration behind The Other Queen.

Philippa Gregory (Author), Alex Kingston, Madeleine Leslay, Richard Armitage (Narrator)

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The Virgin's Lover

*A stunning new unabridged recording, available on audio download* A sumptuous historical novel set in the court of Elizabeth I, from Sunday Times No.1 bestseller Philippa Gregory, the author of The Other Boleyn Girl. 1558. After years of waiting, Princess Elizabeth accedes to the throne of England. For many, Elizabeth's ascension is a glorious new dawn. Not so for Amy Dudley, whose ambitious husband, Sir Robert, is the acknowledged favourite of the new queen - a queen who must marry to secure her survival. But Robert Dudley has many powerful enemies. And although she is clearly besotted with him, the virgin queen will not risk her hold on the throne. Desire and ambition are unleashed at the court and at her home, Amy Dudley will face the ultimate betrayal. With an exclusive afterword written and read by Philippa Gregory, exploring the inspiration behind The Virgin's Lover.

Philippa Gregory (Author), Perdita Weeks (Narrator)

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The Queen's Fool

*A stunning new unabridged recording of one of Philippa Gregory's bestselling novels of the Tudor court - available on audio download* 1553. Hannah Green, the young daughter of a Jewish bookseller, is forced out of Spain by the Inquisition, and becomes an unlikely player at the fractious Tudor Court. Her gifts of foresight mean that she is given as a Holy Fool to the newly crowned Mary I. But as Mary's grip on the throne loosens, threatened by the ambitions of her sister, Elizabeth, Hannah is trapped in the deadly rivalry between the daughters of Henry VIII. As a secret Jew and unwitting spy in the struggle between a Catholic queen and a Protestant princess, Hannah must hide her own identity. And as a girl watching a passionate queen and her cold-hearted sister, Hannah must learn how to be a woman. With an exclusive afterword written and read by Philippa Gregory, exploring the inspiration behind Hannah Green's story.

Philippa Gregory (Author), Yolanda Kettle (Narrator)

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