Product Description

The beautiful and sumptuous new novel of the struggle for power between Mary I and her sister Elizabeth, from the bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #291 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The bitter enmity between Elizabeth the First and Mary Tudor, the daughters of Henry VIII (not to mention the conflict between their mothers Anne Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon) makes the squabbles between modern-day royals seem small beer indeed. This is particularly clear after reading something as enjoyable as Philippa Gregory's The Queen's Fool, which treats the period and its turbulent sweep with an almost operatic grandeur. In The Other Boleyn Girl, Gregory delivered a tremendous popular success and lifted this kind of popular historical writing from the realms of romantic fiction to something rich in authentic drama and convincing historical verisimilitude.

Mary and Elizabeth, the two young princesses, have a common goal: to be Queen of England. To achieve this, they need both to win the love of the people and learn how to negotiate dangerous political pitfalls. Gregory recreates this era with tremendous colour, and she makes the court an enticing but danger-fraught place. Into this setting comes the eponymous fool, the youthful Hannah, who (despite her air of guileless religiousness) is not naive. She soon finds herself having to deal with the beguiling but treacherous Robert Dudley. Dispatched to report on Princess Mary, Hannah discovers in her a passionate religious conviction (to return England to the rule of Rome and its pope) that will have fatal consequences.

From Tolstoy's War and Peace onwards, historical novelists have set fictitious characters among real-life personages with mixed success; the author's creations can often pale beside the historical figures. That is emphatically not the case here, and Gregory ensures that all her characters have a full and teeming life. Expect a major movie: something as colourful and exuberant as The Queen's Fool is a natural for screen adaptation. --Barry Forshaw

Synopsis
A stunning novel set in the Tudor court, as the rivalry between Queen Mary and her half-sister Elizabeth is played out against a background of betrayal, conflict and passion. The savage rivalry of the daughters of Henry VIII, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth, mirrors that of their mothers, Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Each will fight by any available means for the crown and future of the kingdom. Elizabeth's bitter struggle to claim the throne she believes is hers by right, and the man she desires almost more than her crown, is watched by her 'fool': a girl who has been forced to leave her homeland of Spain, as a Jew fleeing the Inquisition. In a court where truth is wittily denied and lies are mere games, it is the fool who can speak plainly: in these dangerous times, a woman must choose between ambition and love. Elizabeth will not make the same mistakes as her mother.

About the Author
Born in Kenya in 1954, Philippa Gregory moved to England with her family and was educated in Bristol and at the National Council for the Training of Journalists course in Cardiff. She worked as a senior reporter on the Portsmouth News, and as a journalist and producer for BBC radio.Philippa obtained a BA degree in history at the University of Sussex in Brighton and a PhD at Edinburgh University in 18th-century literature.

Her first novel, Wideacre, was written as she completed her PhD and became an instant world wide bestseller. On its publication, she became a full-time writer, and now lives with her family on a small farm in the North of England.Her knowledge of gothic 18th century novels led to Philippa writing Wideacre, which was followed by a haunting sequel, The Favoured Child, and the delightful happy ending of the trilogy: Meridon. This novel was listed in Feminist Book Fortnight and for the Romantic Novel of the Year at the same time - one of the many instances of Philippa's work appealing to very different readers.

The trilogy was followed by The Wise Woman, a dazzling, disturbing novel of dark powers and desires set against the rich tapestry of the Reformation, and by Fallen Skies, an evocative realistic story set after the First World War. Her novel A Respectable Trade took her back to the 18th century where her knowledge of the slave trade and her home town of Bristol produced a haunting novel of slave trading and its terrible human cost. This is the only modern novel to explore the tragedies of slavery in England itself, and features a group of kidnapped African people trying to find their freedom in the elegant houses of 18th century Clifton. Gregory adapted her book for a highly acclaimed BBC television production which won the prize for drama from the Commission for Racial Equality and was shortlisted for a BAFTA for the screenplay.Next came two of Gregory's best-loved novels, Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth, based on the true-life story of father and son John Tradescant working in the upheaval of the English Civil War. In these works Gregory pioneered the genre which has become her own: fictional biography, the true story of a real person brought to life with painstaking research and passionate verve.

The flowering of this new style was undoubtedly The Other Boleyn Girl, a runaway bestseller which stormed the US market and then went worldwide telling the story of the little-known sister to Anne Boleyn. Now published in 26 countries with more than a million copies in print in the US alone, this is becoming a classic historical novel, winning the Parker Pen Novel of the Year award 2002, and the Romantic Times fictional biography award. The Other Boleyn Girl was adapted for the BBC as a single television drama and a film is now in production starring Scarlett Johannsson as Mary Boleyn, Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn and Eric Bana as Henry VIII.Other Tudor novels followed, The Queen's Fool, taking a sympathetic look at Mary Tudor through the eyes of a real-life character, a female fool, was Top Twenty bestseller for 20 weeks in the UK, and has been bought in the US for a four-part television drama special, The Virgin's Lover, telling the story of Elizabeth I's love affair with Robert Dudley, and the little-known story of his wife, was simultaneously in the Top Twenty bestseller lists in both the UK and USA whilst being Number One in New Zealand. It reached the Top Ten in paperback.Her third Tudor novel, The Constant Princess, which tells the dramatic life story of Katherine of Aragon as a princess raised in the Moorish Palace of the Alhambra who achieves her life ambition of becoming Queen of England, stayed in the Top Twenty for thirteen weeks and in the Top Ten for four weeks in the UK.Her most recent novel, The Boleyn Inheritance, will delight her millions of readers world-wide. It tells the stories of three extraordinary women: Jane Boleyn, the widow of Anne Boleyn's brother George, Anne of Cleves, the young woman who was brought to England by Henry VIII to be his bride and then spitefully rejected by him and Katherine Howard the girl, almost a child, whom he adored and then killed. As the three women tell their stories in their own words the paranoid court of the ageing King comes to life on the page.

Philippa makes regular contributions to newspapers and magazines, with short stories, features and reviews. A frequent broadcaster, she is a regular member on BBC Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz, Quote Unquote, and is the Tudor expert for television Channel 4's Time Team. She also presents historical programmes for BBC, most recently an exploration into 18th century African slavery in the North East of England. She was the primary judge for the Whitbread Novel of the Year Prize.In her spare time, Philippa runs an extraordinary charity, founded by her and a Gambian schoolmaster, Ismaila Sisay. Gardens for the Gambia digs wells for schools and communities in The Gambia, financed by money raised and donated by Philippa herself. The charity is the biggest well-builder in The Gambia and is creating market gardens in this, the poorest nation in Africa, at the rate of two a week at present. Philippa and Ismaila have created more than sixty wells so far.

Customer Reviews

mmm not the best
this is my least favourite of Philippa Gregorys work, for one I could not relate to Hannah's character and felt her constant flipping of sides through out the book to really eat away at my patience I also felt she did not do much and that her character was pretty pointless and that if she wanted to do a book on the tudor court in its later years perhaps a book being told from Mary and Elizabeth's points of view would have been better . I liked her portrayal of Mary I felt it was a nice little spin on her but I disliked Elizabeth immensely so much so that I avoided the Virgins lover for fear of how she could destroy my own thoughts on our great queen as being nothing more then a cruel nasty piece of work, which I felt was a very bad portrayal on Gregory's side as I now can not stand any thing to do with Elizabeth.

The Queens Fool 4 me!
I have read this book 3 times,months apart and never tire of it.
The story is gripping from beginning to end,a story of triumph for the leading character hannah.
I love brittish history,which is a bonus when it came to reading Phillipa Gregory,s story.
This book has encouraged me to read more from this very talented author.
Well done Phillipa!!!!

Great intro to Gregory's novels
I read this book a while ago and can still remember it in detail. I was engrossed in it and really involved in the lives of the characters, genuinely afraid for the lead character and the dangers of her naivety in a Tudor court.

Gregory's novel based around this period are always really well written, full of well researched details which adds extra dimensions to the story. As such, and as the first novel by the author that I had read, I felt it was a great recommendation to her other works which I am making my way through currently....