Phillipa Gregory book signing!

Last night was Phillipa Gregory's first stop on her US book tour for "The White Queen". She was at Boston University at the Tsai performance center and gave a presentation about her new book. She was wonderful! She was engaging, charming and had wonderful insight into Tudor history. She also did a Q & A in which the audience members can ask her any questions they wanted (and most people asked questions about her other books!) Then she did a book signing.

Her next book will be called "The Red Queen" and it will be about Margaret Beaufort, the Queen of the Lancaster house.

I really enjoy the Q & As because we Tudor nerds can ask her any questions we wanted to. Somebody asked her what she thought of the movie "The Other Boleyn Girl" and she made a joke about how she can't really complain since they gave her money for it and she spent it happily. In my opinion, I think she was trying to put in nice words that the movie didn't really do the book justice but also adding that a movie is only an hour and half long and her book is 500 pages. She did say she love the actors though. Haha.

Somebody else asked her what her opinion of Anne Boleyn was, and her response was that Anne was a very ambitious woman, but not a very nice or good person. Just "wicked" ambitious. My initial instinct was that I got offended because I loooove Anne Boleyn and admire her greatly, but I guess it makes sense that people generally don't rise to the top by being nice. It's like being the boss - you can't be too nice and a respected boss at the same time.

I asked her if she really thought Elizabeth had sex with Robert Dudley and she believed that Elizabeth did. I personally do NOT believe that is the case, but it is interesting to hear her opinion on it. Gregory said that there is a written record of Elizabeth half naked calling Robert out her window to have Robert come up to her room - Gregory thinks that, of course, anybody who does this must obviously be doing the deed with the man they love. And yes, I do agree with her that Elizabeth was madly in love with Robert Dudley. But I just don't believe Elizabeth would risk pregnancy for her throne.

A lot of women were there- I think I saw maybe one or two men. Figures!

I got two books signed- "The White Queen" and "The Other Boleyn Girl". I think "The Other Boleyn Girl" will always be one of my favorite books ever, along with The Queen's Fool. Gregory brought up how everyone LOVES Hannah Green, and I practically giggled in glee because I DO love that character.

I also took this event as a fabulous opportunity to promote my club -
Tudor History: Boston group on facebook! I wish I found out about it earlier so I could have made legitimate business cards to hand out, but of course, I ended up writing chicken scratch on a piece of paper, made 200 copies, and then handed it out to people that were there. I got yelled at by a staff member to stop soliciting and to sit down. But then after the event, I just stood outside with Ashlyn, another fellow Tudor nerd and member of the club, and we chatted up with other Tudor nerds about the group!


PLEASE JOIN if you love Tudor History and live in the Greater Boston area!!