The fall happened when she was riding in the fields near her home and she had to walk half a mile across the field to raise the alarm. The ambulance service sent the North East Air Ambulance to airlift her to James Cook Memorial Hospital at Middlesborough.

Says Philippa: ‘It really is a tremendous service, without the helicopter I don’t know how I would have got to hospital. The field was so rutted and muddy that they could not have got the ambulance in, and I don’t think I could have walked. It was a tremendous relief to be in safe hands and I am very grateful to the doctor and crew.’

Philippa stayed in hospital for two nights before being sent home with a body brace which she will wear until the bones are healed. She says: ‘I have had to cancel an appearance at the Words on the Water Literary Festival in Cumbria and I am very sorry to have disappointed ticket holders. I hope to be up and about again by April or May but it is a slow process.’

On the good side she laughs that six weeks rest has meant that she has no distractions from finishing her new novel which is about Henry’s two Queens Anne of Cleeves and Katherine Howard.

‘The novel was deadlined for the end of the month and I finished it early,’ she says. ‘Actually, it was a wonderful distraction to be able to lie on the bed with my laptop on my knees and just go to another place and time. ‘I have loved writing it and I think it is a powerful and effective novel. I hope the readers like it as much as I do - but I hope they read it under more comfortable circumstances!’

The new book - which has no title as yet - will be published in the UK in October and in the US later in the fall.