If You Love Philippa Gregory, Here Is Where to Come Next
Updated: Sep 5
I came to English history through Philippa Gregory. Most of us did. The White Queen was the book that opened the door to the Wars of the Roses for me. After that I went looking for everything I could find on the period, and especially on Warwick. The chronicles, the academic histories, the letters that survived. Sharon Kay Penman got me the rest of the way. The Sunne in Splendour is still the book I measure myself against. Once you start chasing Warwick, you do not stop.
If you know that feeling, we are the same kind of reader.
Gregory's gift is the women who were there. Elizabeth Woodville marrying Edward IV. Margaret Beaufort choosing her son over every other loyalty. Jacquetta of Luxembourg refusing to stay quiet. The wives, the queens, the mothers whose names history records but whose interior lives the chronicles never bothered with.
I write in that same line. My Lochlainn series follows Alys of Lochlainn through the Wars of the Roses, from the prequel Shamrock through White Rose, Red Rose, and Fleur de Lys. Hampton, the man at the centre of that series, is inspired by Warwick. He had to be. I had wanted to write Warwick for years, and Hampton was the closest I could get without committing to the man himself.
He was not enough. Warwick deserved the full five books I had been holding back from giving him.
That is the Blood of the Bear series, and The Kingmaker's Spy is book one. Where Gregory gives you the kings and the queens, I give you the man standing just behind the throne. Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. The man history calls a schemer, when the truth is more complicated. Divided loyalties. Blood on his hands. A conscience underneath all of it. And a woman in his shadow who history hardly recorded, because she hid too well.
If you have ever finished a Philippa Gregory novel wanting more spice, more morally grey, and more of what the chronicles never wrote down, this is the book.
Gregory opens the door to the fifteenth century. I try to keep it open once you are inside.
Where I sit on the shelf
Philippa Gregory — the queens and the court women. Wars of the Roses into the Tudors. Research worn lightly. Behind closed doors.
Sharon Kay Penman — kings and military titans. The Plantagenets and Richard III. Research deep and unhurried. Restrained.
Augusta Gosling — the people standing just behind the throne. Wars of the Roses, 1455 to 1471. Research deep, but the story moves. Open door.
If you fancy going deeper, my monthly letter goes out from my writing desk. It is where I share what I have been reading in the archives, which morally complicated man is keeping me up at night, and what the chronicles taught me this week. The door is open.
Where to start
If you came for Warwick, start with The Kingmaker's Spy. Calais, 1457, and the woman sent to find a traitor inside his garrison.
If you came for the women of the Wars of the Roses, start with White Rose. Alys of Lochlainn, an Irish heiress bound to a man she never chose, as England splits between York and Lancaster.
If you want the whole Lochlainn story in order: Shamrock, White Rose, Red Rose, Fleur de Lys, then Christmas at Hampton Castle.
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