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Marie Antoinette
On sale
8th August 2007
Price: £16.99
‘Drama, betrayal, religion and sex, it’s all here … Fascinating’ GUARDIAN
‘Beautifully paced, impeccably written … Don’t miss it’ INDEPENDENT
‘Fraser is at her best here, lucid, authoritative and compassionate’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Superbly researched … the definitive work on the ill-fated queen’ CATHOLIC HERALD
Marie Antoinette’s dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions. To many people, she is still ‘la reine méchante’, whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: ‘let them eat cake’. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny.
Antonia Fraser examines her influence over the king, Louis XVI, the accusations and sexual slurs made against her, her patronage of the arts which enhanced French cultural life, her imprisonment, the death threats made against her, rumours of lesbian affairs, her trial (during which her young son was forced to testify to sexual abuse by his mother) and her eventual execution by guillotine in 1793.
‘Beautifully paced, impeccably written … Don’t miss it’ INDEPENDENT
‘Fraser is at her best here, lucid, authoritative and compassionate’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Superbly researched … the definitive work on the ill-fated queen’ CATHOLIC HERALD
Marie Antoinette’s dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions. To many people, she is still ‘la reine méchante’, whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: ‘let them eat cake’. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny.
Antonia Fraser examines her influence over the king, Louis XVI, the accusations and sexual slurs made against her, her patronage of the arts which enhanced French cultural life, her imprisonment, the death threats made against her, rumours of lesbian affairs, her trial (during which her young son was forced to testify to sexual abuse by his mother) and her eventual execution by guillotine in 1793.
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Reviews
In MARIE ANTOINETTE, Fraser's superb gifts of narrative, characterisation and eye for salient detail are deployed to greater effect than ever before
An authoritative, sympathetic and beautifully written life of the much maligned queen
[Fraser] has written a fine biography . . . A fine and rewarding book
A superbly researched book which will clearly become the definitive work on the ill-fated queen
Fraser is at her best here, lucid, authoritative and compassionate
A sparkling new biography . . . Antonia Fraser writes beautifully, with impressively shrewd judgement . . . This is a fine book and a very good read
This beautifully paced, impeccably written biography is destined to generate the same success as Antonia Fraser's previous work. Don't miss it
Drama, betrayal, religion and sex, it's all here, adorned by often fascinating, at times esoteric detail
That fatal combination of a magnificent story, magnificently well told. It's the perfect book in which to lose yourself when you can afford to do nothing else for a day or so.
Fraser sets out to rescue Marie Antoinette from the shadow of the guillotine, and she does this with resounding success
A hugely well-researched work . . . MARIE ANTOINETTE is a heroic and tragic exercise in identification