Philippa Gregory
speaker
357 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 25 May
Philippa Gregory’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You're basically doing a lot of admin and you're basically using a lot of your business skills as a diplomat, but you're not visibly in trade in the same way.
Well, they're doing trade deals, but also they're going to the courts and representing the king at the court.
So if there's an alliance in the offing, they're the ones who go and say, shall we do a royal visit?
What do you want?
What's your attitude to the Pope or Spain?
So basically, you've got a few key countries, which you have to either be formally in alliance with or formally enemies with.
Bolin goes to the French court quite often.
Obviously, his French is very good.
Obviously, he has connections because of his trade background and also because of his now aristocratic connections.
He's in a very good position to go there and
just be super charming and put the point that the English want.
So you'd have things like exchange of prisoners if there'd been or joint policy on parrots.
If you had difficulty actually with trade negotiations, taxes and tariffs, he'd be doing stuff like that.
And then ultimately, when it really, really matters, he's organizing things like the king's visit to Calais.
Humble brag.
I think we would have heard of him as one of the court functionaries who do things.
I mean, what if Anne Boleyn hadn't been Queen?
Would Thomas Cromwell have risen?
But say Thomas Cromwell had risen, he would have been reporting to Thomas Cromwell about overseas trade and overseas responsibilities.
It remained minor but significant.
Showing 41–60 of 357 · page 3 of 18
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