She was a "rebel" at Colston's Girls' School[4][5] where she obtained a B grade in English and two E grades in History and Geography at A-level. She then went to journalism college in Cardiff and spent a year as an apprentice with the Portsmouth News before she managed to gain a place on an English literature degree course at the University of Sussex, where she switched to a history course. In 1982, she received a B.A. degree in history from Sussex University.[6]
She has written novels set in several different historical periods, though primarily the Tudor period and the 16th century. Reading a number of novels set in the 17th century led her to write the best-selling Lacey trilogy Wideacre, which is a story about the love of land and incest, The Favoured Child and Meridon. This was followed by The Wise Woman. A Respectable Trade, a novel of the slave trade in England, set in 18th-century Bristol, was adapted by Gregory for a four-part drama series for BBC television. Gregory's script was nominated for a BAFTA, won an award from the Committee for Racial Equality, and the film was shown worldwide.[citation needed]
Two novels about a gardening family are set during the English Civil War: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth, while she has in addition written contemporary fiction – Perfectly Correct, Mrs Hartley and the Growth Centre, The Little House and Zelda's Cut. She has also written for children.[citation needed]
In 2013, Helen Brown of The Telegraph wrote that "Gregory has made an impressive career out of breathing passionate, independent life into the historical noblewomen whose personalities had previously lain flat on family trees, remembered only as diplomatic currency and brood mares."[11] She added, "Gregory’s historical fiction has always been entertainingly speculative (those tempted to sneer should note that she’s never claimed otherwise) and comes with lashings of romantic licence."[11]
In 2011, she contributed a short story "Why Holly Berries are as Red as Roses" to an anthology supporting the Woodland Trust. The anthology, Why Willows Weep has so far helped The Woodland Trust plant approximately 50,000 trees.[12]
Gregory has said that her "commitment to historical accuracy" is a hallmark of her writing.[15] This is disputed by historians. Historian David Starkey, appearing alongside Gregory in a documentary about Anne Boleyn, described her work as "good Mills and Boon",[16] adding that: "We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous."[17]Susan Bordo criticised Gregory's claims to historical accuracy as "self-deceptive and self-promoting chutzpah", and notes that it is not so much the many inaccuracies in her work as "Gregory's insistence on her meticulous adherence to history that most aggravates the scholars."[18]
In her novel The Other Boleyn Girl, her portrayal of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn drew criticism.[19][20] The novel depicts Anne as cold and ruthless, as well as strongly implying that the accusations that she committed adultery and incest with her brother were true, despite it being widely accepted that she was innocent of the charges.[21] Novelist Robin Maxwell refused on principle to write a blurb for this book, describing its characterisation of Anne as "vicious, unsupportable".[22]
Philanthropy
Gregory runs a small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia.[23] Gardens for The Gambia was established in 1993 when Gregory was in The Gambia, researching for her book A Respectable Trade.
Since then the charity has dug almost 200 low technology, low budget and therefore easily maintained wells, which are on-stream and providing water to irrigate school and community gardens to provide meals for the poorest children and harvest a cash crop to buy school equipment, seeds and tools.
In addition to wells, the charity has piloted a successful bee-keeping scheme, funded feeding programmes and educational workshops in batik and pottery and is working with larger donors to install mechanical boreholes in some remote areas of the country where the water table is not accessible by digging alone.
Gregory wrote her first novel Wideacre while completing her doctorate[15] and lived during that time in a cottage on the Pennine Way with her first husband Peter Chislett, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, and their baby daughter. They divorced before the book was published.
Previously separated as the Tudor Court and Cousins' War series, as of August 2016 Gregory lists these novels as one series, The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels.[24][25]
