WHAT BOOK would historical novelist Philippa Gregory take to a desert island?

… are you reading now?

I’m reading Elizabeth von Arnim’s Father. It’s a social comedy set pre-World War II, her own time, and is a gently satirical take on the problems facing a woman who wants to be independent.

The heroine is so like the women I write about in my book Normal Women at this time — educated and independent-thinking but with opportunities closed to them.

Von Arnim is not well known — my scholarly blue-stocking aunt introduced her books to me, and I have loved her ever since.

… would you take to a desert island?

If I was going to be on a desert island, I’d want something I could re-read over and over, so it would have to be Middlemarch by George Eliot.

Historical novelist Philippa Gregory is drawn to the complex women characters in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, her desert island pick 

One of the greatest women writers gives us some of the greatest women characters. 

Dorothea is a clever young woman with really nothing to do — she mistakes love of study for love of the scholar and marries the wrong man.

But even the right man is not her equal. It’s a wonderfully nuanced picture of how difficult it is to be a highly intelligent woman with a great capacity for love.

Other women characters are similarly complex: the wonderfully dreadful Rosamond Vincy, who catches and ruins her man, and the endearing Harriet, who seems like a foolish indulgent woman, but rises from hardship.

It’s extraordinarily dense and deeply moving, a snapshot of a whole provincial town at a time of change.

… first gave you the reading bug?

The Tree That Sat Down by Beverley Nichols was one of her childhood favourites 

Aged around eight, The Tree That Sat Down by Beverley Nichols was a doorway to a completely convincing world that was recognisably my world but was filled with magic.

It’s quite a traditional story which starts, as all great children’s stories do, with ‘Once upon a time’. I loved it.

… left you cold?

I have tried and tried to love Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

I have thrust it on young members of my family for their own good, but now I can say it — it’s a great story wrapped up in an absurdly boring narration. The dull ill man in bed! The garrulous housekeeper!

What’s the idea: is it too good and too sexy a story to put straight on the page? Everyone I know who loves it is thinking of one of the many film versions of the novel or Kate Bush singing.

• Normal Women: 900 Years Of Making History by Philippa Gregory is published on October 26 (William Collins, £25).