Description
Book SynopsisA NEW STATESMEN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023?A lasting work of social history' THE TIMESA genuinely new history of our nation' DAN JONESThis celebration of women is a triumph of popular history' SPECTATOR''Philippa Gregory uses all her bestseller skills to weave a narrative with pace'' ANTONIA FRASERFROM THE MULTI-MILLION BESTSELLING HISTORICAL NOVELIST COMES THE CULMINATION OF HER LIFE'S WORKDid 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 i
Trade Review EARLY PRAISE FOR NORMAL WOMEN
‘Gregory’s 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 together…Gregory has the novelist’s 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 women’s 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 author’s 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
