The Last Tudor [9781471133053]

'Bitterly, I think that Elizabeth does not want cousins, she does not want heirs, she wants all her relations to be as dead as her mother. But she does love a big funeral.'

Elizabeth's royal cousin Jane Grey is faced with the choice of death or denying her faith after being forced onto the throne of England. It is left to Elizabeth to measure the threat posed to her by the remaining Grey girls - the famous beauty Katherine Grey and her sister, a little person, Mary. Alternatively befriended and snubbed, the two girls thrive as the queen's companions, learning to judge her moods and avoid her temper tantrums. But they each have a secret: Katherine is in love with an heir to the great family Seymour, and Mary with the queen's sergeant porter. They come to realise that Elizabeth will never allow either of them to marry for fear of a Tudor heir to the throne.

Their martyred sister's advice is clear. 'Learn you to die,' Jane wrote in her famous letter to Katherine. But Jane's tragic story and her fatal choice is only the beginning for her two beloved sisters . . .

'Elizabeth has become a monster in my mind. One Tudor queen took my sister, the other will take my good name.'

The Last Tudor is Philippa Gregory's final novel based on the Tudor family. She brings a lifetime of study and love of her subject to this story of three young women finding their way in a world of deceit and danger.

'Gregory has popularised Tudor history perhaps more than any other living fiction writer . . .  All of her books feature strong, complex women, doing their best to improve their lives in worlds dominated by men' - Sunday Times

'Nobody shines a light on the women of Tudor history like Philippa Gregory' - Good Housekeeping

'A master storyteller . . . Gregory captures the intrigue and suspense of life at the Tudor court in vivid detail' - Daily Express

'Popular historical fiction at its finest, immaculately researched and superbly told' - The Times