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British author Philippa Gregory writes about women in history from the perspective of, as she calls herself, "a radical historian."

By that, she means that although her mostly royal subjects – Elizabeth I; Mary, Queen of Scots; Anne Boleyn – have had barrels of ink expended on dissecting their lives, she looks at them freshly, "staying absolutely true to the historical record and what really happened, not what previous historians thought had happened.

"Historical writing has been entirely dominated by middle-class men, so what would you expect?" she asks rhetorically, speaking by phone from London.

Ms. Gregory, 54, will talk about her latest book, The Other Queen (Touchstone, $25.95), today at Highland Park United Methodist Church as part of its Cornerstone Speakers Initiative. The book, which came out in mid-September, deals with the fraught period of English history when Mary, Queen of Scots, challenged the throne held by Elizabeth I and was detained in Britain.

Ms. Gregory is quite fond of Dallas; her talk in February at the Dallas Museum of Art was a huge hit. "I love the architecture and the lovely weather in the autumn," she says. "Everything there is of such a large, prosperous scale.

"I always feel among friends there, and I love your art galleries and your arboretum. I'm always on a plane or in a hotel room, so if I can find any kind of wilderness, I go off like a little rabbit."

Ms. Gregory has 5.3 million books in print, according to her publisher, among them The Virgin's Lover, about Elizabeth I's affair with Robert Dudley, and The Other Boleyn Girl, which was made into a popular film.

Ms. Gregory, who has a background in journalism and a doctorate in 18th-century literature, says that despite their political and financial acumen, she wouldn't call her characters "modern women."

"Women throughout history have had determination and financial brains," she says. "It's not that we invented them. It's just that only in the modern age have we begun to acknowledge and celebrate them."

In The Other Queen, Mary finds herself as the forced guest of newlyweds George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife, Bess of Hardwick, in the harsh north of England.

Mary must fight, sometimes by unscrupulous means, to retain her crown, and Bess struggles with equal grit to retain the considerable fortune she has built through shrewd business dealings. "She [Bess] has to contest two wills to get what her [previous] husbands had left to her," Ms. Gregory says, only to see it all threatened by this upstart queen of Scots.

And although she's writing about events that took place 450 years ago, their echoes can still be heard. For instance, Ms. Gregory notes, Elizabeth's devious adviser, William Cecil, "pretty much invented a spy network that found and created information, and then created disinformation and reported it back to people who didn't realize they'd made it up. ... It's exactly what we're doing in the war against terror."

Ms. Gregory has a wicked sense of humor, and audiences are often surprised by her antics. At this spring's BookExpo America, for example, she was on a panel with basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson. She whipped out a ball and spun it on her thumb. "My other fingers were too weak," she explains. "I practiced for months to get it right.

"I asked him if I was doing it right," she says. "He took both my hands in his and said: 'Ma'am, I don't know because I'm a point guard. I never learned to do that.' "

PLAN YOUR LIFE Philippa Gregory will discuss and sign The Other Queen at 7 tonight at Highland Park United Methodist Church, Wesley Hall, Mockingbird at Hillcrest. Free. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. 214-523-2270, www.cornerstoneworship.org.

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