Did the #MeToo movement affect how you wanted to write the character of Alinor? Has the persistence of this current women’s movement affected your plans for the series as a whole?

My commitment to feminism as a way of understanding the world and as a hope for the future goes back a long way, and the #MeToo movement has been an inspiration to me in seeing courageous women stand together. I have been guided in this fictional series by my simultaneous work on a new nonfiction book of history which is going to trace the lives of ordinary women (and the obstacles they faced) over a long study from 1066 to 1966 in England. I hope to publish this within five years. As a historian I am particularly interested in the roots of women’s oppression and ill treatment, and I think I can make the greatest contribution to the movement by showing how the past contributes to our lives now. It’s really shocking to understand how little improvement there has been in terms of assaults on women while we have made great strides in political representation.

You are very involved with the charity Gardens for The Gambia. Can you share how that came about?

I founded the charity Gardens for The Gambia with a headmaster of a rural Gambian primary school in 1993 to provide water for wells in the gardens of rural schools in The Gambia. The vegetables they grow provide school dinners for the poorest children in school, who would otherwise have nothing to eat all day; the surplus produce is sold and stationery and educational equipment is bought with the profit; and the children learn the basics of sustainable agriculture. The gardens are planted rather like an English allotment. They grow all sorts of vegetables and salad vegetables. Usually the school also plants an orchard of citrus trees and walnut trees. Often pupils from the senior class of these primary schools will be made responsible for the health of their particular tree. They fence it to protect it from straying animals and they water it every day from the well. We dig the wells with local labor and we go down about sixteen meters to tap clean water. We provide a rope and a bucket and—job done! It’s a beautiful little scheme that makes a difference to about two hundred children in every school and we’ve completed nearly two hundred wells. I pay for it from my own money and from donations—it’s only £300 per well [almost $400], so it’s extraordinarily good value for money in transforming the lives of the poorest people in Africa. I’m very grateful to people who donate to share this project with me.

Read more at: https://www.philippagregory.com/gardens-for-the-gambia.

GARDENS FOR THE GAMBIA

Philippa Gregory visited The Gambia, one of the driest and poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa, in 1993 and paid for a well to be hand dug in a village primary school at Sika. Now—more than two hundred wells later—she continues to raise money and commission wells in village schools, in community gardens, and in The Gambia’s only agricultural college. She works with her representative in The Gambia, headmaster Ismaila Sisay, and their charity now funds pottery and batik classes, beekeeping, and adult literacy programs.