Tidelands
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 neighbors. 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.
Reviews
‘Vivid and beguiling – Philippa Gregory at her best’
woman&home'
Tidelands
evokes a world of suspense and superstition. Its fascinating fictional
heroine, Alinor, is caught in a net of in-between spaces . . . I was
completely swept up in this wonderful, immersive story set in the
English Civil War when women who lived unconventional lives risked being
accused of witchcraft'
Tina Jackson, Writing Magazine
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 popularized 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
Born in Kenya in 1954, Philippa Gregory moved to England with her family
and was educated in Bristol and at the National Council for the
Training of Journalists course in Cardiff. She worked as a senior
reporter on the Portsmouth News, and as a journalist and producer for
BBC Radio.
Philippa obtained a BA degree in History at the
University of Sussex in Brighton and a PhD at Edinburgh University in
18th-century literature. Her first novel, Wideacre, was written as she
completed her PhD and became an instant worldwide bestseller. On its
publication, she became a full-time writer.
Wideacre was followed
by a haunting sequel, The Favoured Child, and the delightful happy
ending of the trilogy: Meridon. This novel was listed in Feminist Book
Fortnight and for the Romantic Novel of the Year at the same time.
Her
next book was The Wise Woman, a dazzling, disturbing novel of dark
powers and desires set against the rich tapestry of the Reformation.
Then came Fallen Skies, an evocative realistic story set after the First
World War. Her novel A Respectable Trade took her back to the 18th
century where her knowledge of the slave trade and her home town of
Bristol explored the human cost of slavery. Gregory adapted her book
for a highly acclaimed BBC television production which won the prize for
drama from the Commission for Racial Equality and was shortlisted for a
BAFTA for the screenplay.
Next came Earthly Joys and Virgin
Earth, based on the true-life story of father and son both named John
Tradescant working in the upheaval of the English Civil War. In these
works Gregory pioneered the genre which has become her own: fictional
biography, the true story of a real person brought to life with research
and verve.
The jewel in the crown of this new style was
undoubtedly The Other Boleyn Girl, a runaway bestseller which stormed
the US market and then went worldwide telling the story of the
little-known sister to Anne Boleyn. Now published globally, this classic
historical novel won the Parker Pen Novel of the Year award 2002 and
the Romantic Times fictional biography award. The Other Boleyn Girl was
adapted for the BBC as a single television drama and by Sony as a major
motion picture starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn, Natalie
Portman as Anne Boleyn and Eric Bana as Henry VIII.
After adding
five more novels to her Tudor Court series including The Constant
Princess and The Queen's Fool, two of her best-loved works, Philippa
moved back in time to write about the family that preceded the Tudors,
the Plantagenets. Her bestselling six-book Cousins' War series tells the
story of the bloody struggle for the throne in the Wars of the Roses
from the perspective of the women behind the scenes. The White Queen,
The Red Queen and The Kingmaker's Daughter were adapted by the BBC and
Starz in 2013 as the hugely popular TV miniseries The White Queen.
Having
completed The Cousins' War series with The King's Curse, Philippa has
come full circle back to the Tudor court. Her latest novel is about
Margaret Tudor, the older sister of Henry VIII: Three Sisters, Three
Queens. Her other work in progress is the young adult series The Order
of Darkness, set in medieval Italy after the fall of Constantinople,
feared at the time to be a sign of the end of the world.
A
regular contributor to newspapers and magazines, with short stories,
features and reviews, Philippa is also a frequent broadcaster, a regular
contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert
for Channel 4's Time Team. As well as her extensive array of historical
novels she has written modern novels, children's books, a collection of
short stories, and a non-fiction book with David Baldwin and Michael
Jones: The Women of the Cousins' War.
She lives in the North of
England with her family and in addition to interests that include
riding, walking, skiing and gardening (an interest born from research
into the Tradescant family for her novel Virgin Earth) she also runs a
small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia.
Philipa's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/PhilippaGregoryOfficial
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