The Wise Woman

Reissue of Philippa Gregory’s disturbing novel of passion and betrayal in Tudor England.

A haunting story of a woman’s desire in a time of turbulence.

Alys joins the nunnery to escape hardship and poverty but finds herself thrown back into the outside world when Henry VIII’s wreckers destroy her sanctuary. With nothing to support her but her looks, her magic and her own instinctive cunning, Alys has to tread a perilous path between the faith of her childhood and her own female power.

When she falls in love with Hugo, the feudal lord and another woman’s husband, she dips into witchcraft to defeat her rival and to win her lover, but finds – as her cynical old foster-mother had advised – that magic makes a poor servant but a dominant master. Since heresy against the new church means the stake, and witchcraft the rope, Alys’s danger is mortal. A woman’s powers are no longer safe to use…

Reviews

Praise for ‘The Wise Woman’:

‘Compulsively readable.’
Andrea Newman, Sunday Express

‘Gregory’s principal feat in this elaborate novel is the irrefutable artistry with which she lends her prose a constant sense of history…Success results from the tense, almost shocking contrast between serious issues – religious doctrine, political integrity, social dynamics – and flights of erotic fancy.’
Sunday Times

‘Compelling… Philippa Gregory reigns supreme as the mistress of historical drama.’ Today

About the author

Philippa Gregory is an internationally renowned author of historical novels. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature from the University of Edinburgh. Works that have been adapted for television include A Respectable Trade, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen's Fool. The Other Boleyn Girl became a major film, starring Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman and Eric Bana. Philippa Gregory lives in the North of England with her family.