Historical fiction

What is it about the Tudors that attracts us so? Is it the pomp and excess of the Tudor monarchs? The bigger-than-life personalities? The passion and the danger? The reversals of fortune that could end in a violent and public death? The reasons are as numerous as the number of readers drawn to this era in British history.

In an interview that raised many hackles, Gregory dismissed erotica as ‘pornography' and crime novel villains as ‘blindingly obvious' - despite her own novels occupying a distinct genre themselves

Emma Donoghue: I know how I started my habit of writing about women from the past - either famous ones who've slipped into obscurity, or the kind of nobodies who never left enough textual trace to make it into capital-H History.  Read more

Author Philippa Gregory insists on a "clause" in film contracts to prevent filmmakers from changing historic facts in her work.

"I could not tolerate script writers changing the history of the novels," Gregory told the BBC. "The temptation of film makers to treat historical fact and fiction as if they were one and the same thing... is something I oppose."

A few days after choosing Mary Renault as the subject of this month's Reading group, I was listening to a few podcast interviews of Penelope Lively talking about her novel Moon Tiger. In one, Lively briefly got on to the subject of historical fiction, and noted: "I used to think that it was a debased genre."  Read more