What a brilliant post!! I love this love letter to your love for…addictive, readable, and as you say, plot driven fiction!! And of course, particularly historical fiction. Have you read the C.J.Sansom Tudor Henry VIII books? They are brill! I was pretty snobby about them before I read them, but they are genuinely great. Evocative, thoughtful prose, and also, less dense and heavy than Mantel (although I loved those too!). Anyway, I had to pass that rec. on! Have you got into detective fiction yet? That’s my not-so-guilty pleasure these days. Fred Vargas is just brill, and have just started the Vera Stanhope series, which I’m loving!
It’s a while since I read A place of greater safety but I thought it was excellent. Have you tried Ann Cleeves’s Shetland series, by the way? I prefer them to Vera, but maybe that’s because of the TV adaptation!
Great post. Margaret Atwood has never really appealed to me, but I’ve been vaguely aware that I ‘should’ like and read her. I couldn’t read the whole long post about it though. I love that period of history, (including the boring bits) but can’t quite get on with Phillipa Gregory. I read and enjoyed Cecily by Annie Garthwaite last year. I also find Dan Jones’ non-fiction very readable, including the Plantagenets and The Hollow Crown. Also, for anyone interested in primary source material around the Wars of the Roses, Helen Castor is writing about the Paston Letters here
Ah thank you so much! I was wondering if I would enjoy Cecily - that's a vote for yes! And fascinating on the Paston letters - thank you for sharing the link!
Gosh, lots and lots to take in here Mini, (hope it's okay to address you thus)?
I have had a love/hate relationship with Philippa Gregory, more because I sometimes get extremely muddled with who is who and why and what..... Your summary was excellent. Thank you.
I love your cooking, but actually, don't mind if you want to share other things.... it's a great change. Hope you have a good week. 🤗
TURGID? Mantel goes at her own pace. Was anybody in a hurry to reach the moment of Cromwell’s execution? I certainly wasn’t. But do you know the absolute queen of historical fiction, Dorothy Dunnett? If not, drop everything and buy her books. She has it all: characters, plot, depth of research and absurdly wonderful prose.
Ahaha. You’ve got me - I’m going to pick up the Mirror and the Light now, and will be v happy to revise my lightly written label of turgidity - I should have said it perhaps requires a little concentration, rather than slipping down in seconds. (A Chateau Margaux vs Jacob’s Creek?!) Thank you so much for the Dorothy Dunnett rec, I was not previously familiar and looking her up on Abe books!
I loved reading this post. I have read some Gregory and quite enjoyed them but I'm currently making my way through the Morland Dynasty books by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles which intertwine a family's fortunes through the centuries with whoever was on the throne at the time and so the family tree was quite fascinating to me.
I have always had very mixed feelings about Margaret Atwood which I can’t even begin to start unpicking here, but yes, there is a smugness and a feeling that she thinks she is the only adult in the room which is an attitude which really rankles. I shall say that I also didn’t see the point of The Testaments and was very upset for Bernadine Evaristo having to share the Booker with it.
Historical fiction - was my fiction of choice for years since my school librarian showed me the shelf with all the Jean Plaidy books at the age of around 12. Although, actually when I think about it, a lot of children’s fiction led me there too - Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, Henry Treece, Cynthia Harnett, and all the time slip stuff like Alison Uttley’s A Traveller in Time. And of course I was also reading Georgette Heyer who has enough real characters in some of her books for her to apply. But I have never read any Philippa Gregory and I am not sure why! Should I?
And Kindle - I ran out of space so badly (went from house with a library of double layered books and books in all the other rooms to a 1 bed flat with books in storage to a tiny 3 bed terrace) that I started putting all adult fiction on the Kindle. I keep my favourites and lots of children’s books, and anything beautifully illustrated and they fill 3 bays of books in the sitting room. And I am now reduced to doing the same with cookery books as my one in one out policy has whittled it down to the 1000 or so I can’t get rid of. So - and this is not a good admission - I am replacing cookery books with electronic versions when they are on 99p offers. Of course this means that unless they were review copies I am buying them twice which makes me feel a bit less guilty!
Aaah yes, friends have said the same about Evaristo and the booker.
I think if you enjoyed Plaidy and Heyer then yes, you'd enjoy Gregory! Would start with the White Queen or the Other Boleyn Girl depending which period of history you fancy.
I use cookbooks on Kindle too but the only thing that puts me off is the poor formatting sometimes compared with the physical books! Phil Koury's vegan baking book one of the few that seems beautifully formatted regardless - wish all (including mine) looked better as ebooks!
Well blow me down with a feather, this was great! I have never read any Philippa Gregory; I know Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time practically by heart and that is my view of the Tudor incursion set in stone. I did try reading Ann Wroe's Perkin, a novel about Warbeck, and that really was turgid, but Harkin's The Pretender sounds excellent so I will look for that, thank you. I find the first two Mantel Cromwell novels very satisfying, but by god she needed an editor for The Mirror and The Light. And I believe I have that Rosa Mundi rose in the garden of the house we moved into a year ago: I called it the raspberry ripple rose because the label had long since disappeared. About Margaret Atwood: she is very brilliant but takes us into too many dark pleasures with cackling pleasure, which is probably her point. I think she did the world a great service with The Handmaid's Tale but I don't read her writing for pleasure.
I get where the writer is coming from. I am sure there is a critique of Atwood that would well be worth reading. This rant isn’t it….and if you’re going to write one, it might be a good idea to dig a little deeper into her work as well as mastering the difference between principle and principal or at least showing it to someone who knows it already before it is posted.
I quick-browsed this, saving it to read properly for after the trip to the Clinic for my partner. But I cannot get into Margaret Atwood either. She is a beautiful poet however. You may want to pick up a book of her poetry. I have not been able to read or watch The Handmaid’s Tale (shudder). I was pleasantly surprised by Atwood’s The Cat’s Eye. I actually loved it and it should be made into a movie, in my opinion. It is about an older female artist preparing for a retrospective of her work and recalling her artistic life. It is very good! Philippa Gregory! That took me back to my school days when I was into historical fiction - all my friends were reading Georgette Heyer and I had Philippa Gregory!
Aah I love both Heyer and Gregory - think on balance prefer Gregory as have to be in the mood for the v specific Heyer language and Gregory is a 'cleaner' read (except apparently for Wideacre!)
Gosh, so much to love about this post! Starting with the title.
Reading the Penelopiad - way back in 2006(?) - was the moment the Margaret Atwood scales fell from my eyes. It was such a shallow, bad-faith exploration of one of the most fascinating women in Greek mythology. Needless to say I enjoyed Eris' sweary takedown of The Handmaid's Tale.
Philippa Gregory's novels are my guilty pleasure - I do have a few paperback copies squirreled away on my bedroom bookshelves, because I can't resist taking them home from book exchanges, but I have also steadily amassed a collection of them on my kobo, waiting for moments of illness or crisis when what I really need is to lose myself in a page-turner. While Wolf Hall is one of my favourite novels, it's not one I'm likely to re-read for comfort. I will definitely seek out The Pretender.
And my delight discovering that the Lancaster rose (r. gallica officinalis) and the York rose (r. alba semi-plena) are sort-of real turned me into a devoted lover of roses - we now have one of each growing in pots, and are hoping to get a "York and Lancaster" or a "Rosa Mundi" to join them in the garden. Living as we do on the Lancashire / Yorkshire boundary, there's a slightly competitive edge to seeing which rose flowers first each year.
Hehe - yes I think you'll like the Pretender, sounds like we're on exactly the same page on Gregory as a comfort read! I did just restart the White Princess and am hooked despite having re-read it at least four times.
And what a lovely crossover on the roses! I love the idea of a competition between the roses as to which one flowers first. If you head to the rose website Cottage Memories, you might find both York and Lancaster and Rosa Mundi for the price of one from another website - they're £10-£13 each, mine just arrived in perfect condition! (An excellent tip-off from @horticulturalish on her supplier page!)
Loved this, especially the diagram! I absorbed Jean Plaidy at a similar age but preferred her when she was being Victoria Holt. Neither of which was her real name, of course. I’m ambivalent about Atwood. Alias Grace is good, and I also like that she lets Louise Penny use her poems in her crime novels.
Ooh, I didn't know she was called Victoria Holt for other fiction - how interesting! Somehow I thought she was the same person as Georgette Heyer but think that's not actually true?
Brilliant post. I get all those references and will look up the Lambert Simnel book - thanks for the recommendation. I too moved onto Gregory after exhausting Jean Plaidy books as a teen. I have found Margaret Atwood hard to return to - we studied The Handmaid's Tale for A level in 1988 when it must have been very new, and I have been a fan ever since, but the books are difficult reads now. I'll put in another word for Gregory's Tradescant duo, Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth, just because the story of the Tradescant father and son (gardeners' to Queen Elizabeth I/Stuart explorers extraordinary) deserves to be more widely known. And if you want a really eye openingly awful read, go for Gregory's first novel, Wideacre - it's like Flowers in the Attic meets historical fiction and not in any good way! A friend found a copy in a charity shop and passed it to me because she could not believe it was the same author as the Tudor Chronicles!
Love this post! And pic! I too am fascinated by the Plantagenets (no family connection alas). Especially love the red star system and boring people in between on the family tree.
Ahaha thank you! A very tenuous connection here but enjoyable nonetheless. I should really have yelled ‘Grandpa George!’ at the television in hindsight, but perhaps didn’t as it sounds so Charlie & the Chocolate factory.
Agh I SO wanted to like it - glad am not the only one!
Food *and* history/literature?! No wonder this is one of my favourite Substacks 😍
When I worked in Euston many moons ago I used to love popping into the BL. I think I still have a Mr Darcy Christmas ornament from the gift shop somewhere….there is something about libraries, even very grand ones, anywhere in the world that makes us bookish types feel right at home! xx
Wait what, they have Mr Darcy Christmas ornaments? A whole new level of excellent. (Sadly the shop was closed when I popped in last.) So glad you enjoyed the post! Xx
What a brilliant post!! I love this love letter to your love for…addictive, readable, and as you say, plot driven fiction!! And of course, particularly historical fiction. Have you read the C.J.Sansom Tudor Henry VIII books? They are brill! I was pretty snobby about them before I read them, but they are genuinely great. Evocative, thoughtful prose, and also, less dense and heavy than Mantel (although I loved those too!). Anyway, I had to pass that rec. on! Have you got into detective fiction yet? That’s my not-so-guilty pleasure these days. Fred Vargas is just brill, and have just started the Vera Stanhope series, which I’m loving!
Ah I haven't read the Sansom - thank you for the tip! Ha, always love detective fiction, am a diehard Christie fan (but only Poirot, not Miss Marple!)
Ooh!! I hope you enjoy! I wish I hadn’t read, so I could read again! X
I’m a big fan of Samson too. Arguably his Spanish civil war novel is his best.
I’ve not read that one now! I’ll get on it! I’m reading Mantel’s French Revolution at the moment!
It’s a while since I read A place of greater safety but I thought it was excellent. Have you tried Ann Cleeves’s Shetland series, by the way? I prefer them to Vera, but maybe that’s because of the TV adaptation!
Great post. Margaret Atwood has never really appealed to me, but I’ve been vaguely aware that I ‘should’ like and read her. I couldn’t read the whole long post about it though. I love that period of history, (including the boring bits) but can’t quite get on with Phillipa Gregory. I read and enjoyed Cecily by Annie Garthwaite last year. I also find Dan Jones’ non-fiction very readable, including the Plantagenets and The Hollow Crown. Also, for anyone interested in primary source material around the Wars of the Roses, Helen Castor is writing about the Paston Letters here
https://open.substack.com/pub/helencastor/p/how-to-read-the-paston-letters?r=1cyod9&utm_medium=ios
Ah thank you so much! I was wondering if I would enjoy Cecily - that's a vote for yes! And fascinating on the Paston letters - thank you for sharing the link!
Gosh, lots and lots to take in here Mini, (hope it's okay to address you thus)?
I have had a love/hate relationship with Philippa Gregory, more because I sometimes get extremely muddled with who is who and why and what..... Your summary was excellent. Thank you.
I love your cooking, but actually, don't mind if you want to share other things.... it's a great change. Hope you have a good week. 🤗
Ah thank you so much! And yes of course on Mini. I may talk about cooking at some point 😂 Hope you have a lovely week too!
TURGID? Mantel goes at her own pace. Was anybody in a hurry to reach the moment of Cromwell’s execution? I certainly wasn’t. But do you know the absolute queen of historical fiction, Dorothy Dunnett? If not, drop everything and buy her books. She has it all: characters, plot, depth of research and absurdly wonderful prose.
Ahaha. You’ve got me - I’m going to pick up the Mirror and the Light now, and will be v happy to revise my lightly written label of turgidity - I should have said it perhaps requires a little concentration, rather than slipping down in seconds. (A Chateau Margaux vs Jacob’s Creek?!) Thank you so much for the Dorothy Dunnett rec, I was not previously familiar and looking her up on Abe books!
Seconded, with enthusiasm! Everyone should read Dunnett.
I loved reading this post. I have read some Gregory and quite enjoyed them but I'm currently making my way through the Morland Dynasty books by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles which intertwine a family's fortunes through the centuries with whoever was on the throne at the time and so the family tree was quite fascinating to me.
Thank you so much! The Morland Dynasty sounds right up my street...
Very interesting post! And so many thoughts.
I have always had very mixed feelings about Margaret Atwood which I can’t even begin to start unpicking here, but yes, there is a smugness and a feeling that she thinks she is the only adult in the room which is an attitude which really rankles. I shall say that I also didn’t see the point of The Testaments and was very upset for Bernadine Evaristo having to share the Booker with it.
Historical fiction - was my fiction of choice for years since my school librarian showed me the shelf with all the Jean Plaidy books at the age of around 12. Although, actually when I think about it, a lot of children’s fiction led me there too - Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, Henry Treece, Cynthia Harnett, and all the time slip stuff like Alison Uttley’s A Traveller in Time. And of course I was also reading Georgette Heyer who has enough real characters in some of her books for her to apply. But I have never read any Philippa Gregory and I am not sure why! Should I?
And Kindle - I ran out of space so badly (went from house with a library of double layered books and books in all the other rooms to a 1 bed flat with books in storage to a tiny 3 bed terrace) that I started putting all adult fiction on the Kindle. I keep my favourites and lots of children’s books, and anything beautifully illustrated and they fill 3 bays of books in the sitting room. And I am now reduced to doing the same with cookery books as my one in one out policy has whittled it down to the 1000 or so I can’t get rid of. So - and this is not a good admission - I am replacing cookery books with electronic versions when they are on 99p offers. Of course this means that unless they were review copies I am buying them twice which makes me feel a bit less guilty!
Aaah yes, friends have said the same about Evaristo and the booker.
I think if you enjoyed Plaidy and Heyer then yes, you'd enjoy Gregory! Would start with the White Queen or the Other Boleyn Girl depending which period of history you fancy.
I use cookbooks on Kindle too but the only thing that puts me off is the poor formatting sometimes compared with the physical books! Phil Koury's vegan baking book one of the few that seems beautifully formatted regardless - wish all (including mine) looked better as ebooks!
Well blow me down with a feather, this was great! I have never read any Philippa Gregory; I know Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time practically by heart and that is my view of the Tudor incursion set in stone. I did try reading Ann Wroe's Perkin, a novel about Warbeck, and that really was turgid, but Harkin's The Pretender sounds excellent so I will look for that, thank you. I find the first two Mantel Cromwell novels very satisfying, but by god she needed an editor for The Mirror and The Light. And I believe I have that Rosa Mundi rose in the garden of the house we moved into a year ago: I called it the raspberry ripple rose because the label had long since disappeared. About Margaret Atwood: she is very brilliant but takes us into too many dark pleasures with cackling pleasure, which is probably her point. I think she did the world a great service with The Handmaid's Tale but I don't read her writing for pleasure.
Ha, I do wonder about that with the third or later novels in a series - hard for an editor to suggest an edit for a megastar like Mantel!
How lovely on the Rosa Mundi - yes it does look like a raspberry ripple - love how it smells beautiful too!
I get where the writer is coming from. I am sure there is a critique of Atwood that would well be worth reading. This rant isn’t it….and if you’re going to write one, it might be a good idea to dig a little deeper into her work as well as mastering the difference between principle and principal or at least showing it to someone who knows it already before it is posted.
I agree. I enjoyed the energy of the attack but a lot of those criticisms didn’t really hold water.
I admit it was childish of me to enjoy it quite so much - but definitely not for everyone! I’d def be interested in other critiques of Atwood too.
I quick-browsed this, saving it to read properly for after the trip to the Clinic for my partner. But I cannot get into Margaret Atwood either. She is a beautiful poet however. You may want to pick up a book of her poetry. I have not been able to read or watch The Handmaid’s Tale (shudder). I was pleasantly surprised by Atwood’s The Cat’s Eye. I actually loved it and it should be made into a movie, in my opinion. It is about an older female artist preparing for a retrospective of her work and recalling her artistic life. It is very good! Philippa Gregory! That took me back to my school days when I was into historical fiction - all my friends were reading Georgette Heyer and I had Philippa Gregory!
Aah I love both Heyer and Gregory - think on balance prefer Gregory as have to be in the mood for the v specific Heyer language and Gregory is a 'cleaner' read (except apparently for Wideacre!)
No time to write a proper and well thought-out comment but a quick note to say I LOVE THIS POST AND YOUR WRITING. Kx
Ah thank you so much Karen! xx
Gosh, so much to love about this post! Starting with the title.
Reading the Penelopiad - way back in 2006(?) - was the moment the Margaret Atwood scales fell from my eyes. It was such a shallow, bad-faith exploration of one of the most fascinating women in Greek mythology. Needless to say I enjoyed Eris' sweary takedown of The Handmaid's Tale.
Philippa Gregory's novels are my guilty pleasure - I do have a few paperback copies squirreled away on my bedroom bookshelves, because I can't resist taking them home from book exchanges, but I have also steadily amassed a collection of them on my kobo, waiting for moments of illness or crisis when what I really need is to lose myself in a page-turner. While Wolf Hall is one of my favourite novels, it's not one I'm likely to re-read for comfort. I will definitely seek out The Pretender.
And my delight discovering that the Lancaster rose (r. gallica officinalis) and the York rose (r. alba semi-plena) are sort-of real turned me into a devoted lover of roses - we now have one of each growing in pots, and are hoping to get a "York and Lancaster" or a "Rosa Mundi" to join them in the garden. Living as we do on the Lancashire / Yorkshire boundary, there's a slightly competitive edge to seeing which rose flowers first each year.
Hehe - yes I think you'll like the Pretender, sounds like we're on exactly the same page on Gregory as a comfort read! I did just restart the White Princess and am hooked despite having re-read it at least four times.
And what a lovely crossover on the roses! I love the idea of a competition between the roses as to which one flowers first. If you head to the rose website Cottage Memories, you might find both York and Lancaster and Rosa Mundi for the price of one from another website - they're £10-£13 each, mine just arrived in perfect condition! (An excellent tip-off from @horticulturalish on her supplier page!)
Loved this, especially the diagram! I absorbed Jean Plaidy at a similar age but preferred her when she was being Victoria Holt. Neither of which was her real name, of course. I’m ambivalent about Atwood. Alias Grace is good, and I also like that she lets Louise Penny use her poems in her crime novels.
Ooh, I didn't know she was called Victoria Holt for other fiction - how interesting! Somehow I thought she was the same person as Georgette Heyer but think that's not actually true?
Brilliant post. I get all those references and will look up the Lambert Simnel book - thanks for the recommendation. I too moved onto Gregory after exhausting Jean Plaidy books as a teen. I have found Margaret Atwood hard to return to - we studied The Handmaid's Tale for A level in 1988 when it must have been very new, and I have been a fan ever since, but the books are difficult reads now. I'll put in another word for Gregory's Tradescant duo, Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth, just because the story of the Tradescant father and son (gardeners' to Queen Elizabeth I/Stuart explorers extraordinary) deserves to be more widely known. And if you want a really eye openingly awful read, go for Gregory's first novel, Wideacre - it's like Flowers in the Attic meets historical fiction and not in any good way! A friend found a copy in a charity shop and passed it to me because she could not believe it was the same author as the Tudor Chronicles!
Ah thank you! Haha, I have heard that Wideacre is a shocker - not sure if I should try it for a laugh or steer clear!
Oh, definitely read it! You'll be agog!
Love this post! And pic! I too am fascinated by the Plantagenets (no family connection alas). Especially love the red star system and boring people in between on the family tree.
Couldn't agree more about The Testaments.
Ahaha thank you! A very tenuous connection here but enjoyable nonetheless. I should really have yelled ‘Grandpa George!’ at the television in hindsight, but perhaps didn’t as it sounds so Charlie & the Chocolate factory.
Agh I SO wanted to like it - glad am not the only one!
Food *and* history/literature?! No wonder this is one of my favourite Substacks 😍
When I worked in Euston many moons ago I used to love popping into the BL. I think I still have a Mr Darcy Christmas ornament from the gift shop somewhere….there is something about libraries, even very grand ones, anywhere in the world that makes us bookish types feel right at home! xx
Wait what, they have Mr Darcy Christmas ornaments? A whole new level of excellent. (Sadly the shop was closed when I popped in last.) So glad you enjoyed the post! Xx
One of the best gift shops in London, I always thought 🤩 xx
I would love to come to your event but… I am also speaking in London on Monday night! The one time I have an excuse to go to the BL…
Currently reading Normal Women by Philippa Gregory and it is OUTSTANDING