Philippa Gregory on history's influential women

The second of Philippa Gregory's trilogy about the Plantagenets, The Red Queen, has been published, looking at the life of Margaret Beaufort - mother of Henry Tudor.

She told the BBC how she feels that the women she writes about had a greater role in British history than they are often given credit for, adding that "if it hadn't been for Margaret Beaufort, Henry Tudor would never have won at Bosworth".

"This is a time of civil war in England... behind all those men were women... sending them to war, or women begging them not to go."