Normal Women: Making history for 900 years

The bestselling, critically acclaimed women’s history from blockbuster author Philippa Gregory – adapted for teen readers!

Join multi-award-winning author Philippa Gregory as she tells the story of English women over 900 years. There are plenty of books profiling exceptional women – this book is DIFFERENT. It’s about ordinary, everyday women – erased from history for centuries.

Meet highway women and blacksmiths, pirates and ‘female husbands’. Meet women who went to war, ploughed the fields, campaigned, wrote, rode in jousts, issued their own currency, built ships, invented things and rioted – a LOT! Their story is one of ingenuity, diversity, rebellion, survival – and sisterhood.

Illustrated throughout by award-winning printmaker Alexis Snell.

PRAISE FOR NORMAL WOMEN (adult edition):

A NEW STATESMEN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

‘A lasting work of social history’ THE TIMES

‘A genuinely new history of our nation’ DAN JONES

‘This celebration of women is a triumph of popular history’ SPECTATOR

'Philippa Gregory uses all her bestseller skills to weave a narrative with pace' ANTONIA FRASER

‘You’ll lose count of the number of things you learn about women and their skewed place in history … the book reframes the past … an essential read’ INDEPENDENT, FIVE-STAR REVIEW

© 2025 Red Shed (Audiobook): 9780008734022

Release date

Audiobook: 27 February 2025