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Philippa Gregory has been called the ‘Queen of Historical Fiction’. The English royal court has inspired many of her bestselling titles, and she’s written sixteen novels about the Plantagenets and Tudors. One of them – The Other Boleyn Girl – became a Â鶹Éç TV drama and a Hollywood movie starring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman.

This success probably surprised her A-level teachers - she says she found history ‘insanely boring’ at school, but her passion was fired at university. She’s also written non-fiction, notably seeking the stories of what she calls ‘normal women’ over 900 years. More recently, she’s returned to the Tudors with a novel called Boleyn Traitor, focussing on the intrigue surrounding Anne’s sister-in-law, Jane.

Her music choices include Mozart, Philip Glass, Scott Joplin and the Mazurka from Coppelia by Leo Delibes.