Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History

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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 LIFES WORK

Did you know that there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry
That the Peasants 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 theyd evolve to become ever more inferior
These are just a few of the startling findings you will learn from reading Philippa Gregorys 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.

Youll lose count of the number of things you learn about women and their skewed place in history as you read Philippa Gregorys stunning Normal Women the book reframes the past an essential read INDEPENDENT, FIVE-STAR REVIEW

Reviews

EARLY PRAISE FOR NORMAL WOMEN

Gregorys theme is that although women have always been regarded as naturally inferior, in reality they make the world go round. They are the healthy, strong, intelligent, spiritual and sexual beings who did everything: nurtured families, farms and businesses, dug graves, birthed babies, brought in harvests, staffed factories, led riots and held communities togetherGregory has the novelists eye for the quirky and the vivid; the wryness of a confident narrator. Normal Womenis a lasting work of social history

THE TIMES, BOOK OF THE WEEK

Gregory has always put women centre stage in her historical fiction but this new nonfiction work strives to restore them to their rightful place in history, and in so doing radically reframe our national story. To an impressive extent, it succeeds

OBSERVER

Gregory places centre stage decades of scholarship in womens history, a genre that started to become important only in the 1970s. Voices of the past can be heard through careful analysis of the fragments that do exist, and reading a document against the grain of its authors intention often reveals crucial details. This celebration of women is a triumph of popular history

SPECTATOR

'Impressive and enjoyable . . . Here, the author uses all her bestseller skills to weave some kind of narrative and once again a splendid pace was maintained . . . With [this] stout, well-written [book] to hand, you could escape any family Christmas for an hour or two daily, going back in time and being utterly engrossed'

ANTONIA FRASER, NEW STATESMAN

Philippa Gregory has been working on this book for more than 10 years, women have been waiting for this gratifying and informative acknowledgment for a thousand

ADELE PARKS, PLATINUM MAGAZINE

Author Bio

Philippa Gregory is an internationally renowned author of historical novels. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature from the University of Edinburgh. Works that have been adapted for television include A Respectable Trade, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen's Fool. The Other Boleyn Girl became a major film, starring Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman and Eric Bana. Philippa Gregory lives in the North of England with her family.