Normal Women: From the Number One Bestselling Author Comes 900 Years of Women Making History
£5.70
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 LIFE’S WORK
- Did 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 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.
‘You’ll lose count of the number of things you learn about women and their skewed place in history as you read Philippa Gregory’s stunning Normal Women … the book reframes the past … an essential read’ INDEPENDENT, FIVE-STAR REVIEW
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Additional information
| Publisher | William Collins (26 Oct. 2023) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| File size | 86267 KB |
| Text-to-Speech | Enabled |
| Screen Reader | Supported |
| Enhanced typesetting | Enabled |
| X-Ray | Not Enabled |
| Word Wise | Enabled |
| Sticky notes | On Kindle Scribe |
| Print length | 677 pages |
by Amazon Customer
This is a very good books full of facts about the lives of women over the centuries.
by Laura
Olivia Cranmer. Mary Boyle. Barbara Leigh Smith. Flora Sandes.
Who are these women? Well – not only are these women new additions to my list of inspirational people, but they are women whose stories have gotten lost in history alongside millions of others.
This book is filled with empowering and uplifting tales, but also shocking and harrowing ones too.
You can read about how women were used as a “last resort” during The Black Death, of heroic acts during the War of the Roses, how the reformation of the church by King Henry VIII affected so many girls and women and the impact that the crowning of Queen Victoria had on women.
All incredibly well known historical events, in which millions of women’s stories have been forgotten or have been left untold.
The book also discusses topics such as the traditions surrounding marriage and how they’ve changed through time, witchcraft trials and how women managed to delay or cancel their executions, religion and what it meant for women in the past and present day including their roles in the church and so much more!
It is filled with such powerful stories, quotes and extracts and I felt so much emotion throughout my experience of reading this.
There were inspirational stories and distressing stories, even the statistics and stories closer to present day filled me with disbelief! But whatever their tale consisted of, they deserve to be heard and our history deserves to be talked about.
This book is a celebration of women and it made me feel so proud to be one.
by Laura
What a brilliant book this is! I’m currently dipping in and out of it, and every page feels so full of life! Philippa Gregory brings so much colour and humanism to the women who came before us. I am just enthralled and fascinated to hear about how these women lived. And surprised to find how very relatable they all are! They really were not so different from us today. This book is truly a treasure. Thank you Philippa for all of your research! Highly recommend this book.
by Amazon Customer
Extremely good so far
by Amazon Customer
Arrived on time and it was well packed.
by Jean Smith
A perfect new book , it arrived very quickly ,can’t wait to start reading it
by Helen Musson
Brilliant!