Philippa Gregory

Well, they're nouveau.

So they're great ones for recording their various rises.

So they start off in Norfolk as tenant farmers.

They're not very grand at all in about the 1300s.

And what we know from them there is that they endow a few churches and they start to rise.

They start to make money.

Sheep farming.

It is all we do.

It is all we do.

And it's probably, it's the only thing that we're really, really specialist at because of the rain, loads of grass and, you know, a very, very unintelligent domesticated animal.

So like, what can I say?

It just suits us temperamentally.

Well, and also, we're not asking much of it.

Basically, once it's bred, all you're doing is cutting its coat off when it's too hot.

So it does it good.

It's a symbiotic relationship.

They get wealthier and wealthier.

And the first one we really notice gets himself knighted and becomes Lord Mayor of London, which is really the nouveau way to rise, that you are in the company of merchants who recognize wealth and who respect wealth.

And then they promote you to a civic position.

And the position of being Lord Mayor of London is, of course, very grand because London is, as it were, a separate political and civic place.