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Marie Antoinette
On sale
13th August 2009
Price: £16.99
Marie Antoinette’s dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions. To many people, she is still “la reine m chante”, 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.
Read by Lindsay Duncan
(p) 2001 Orion Publishing Group
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.
Read by Lindsay Duncan
(p) 2001 Orion Publishing Group
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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
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
A hugely well-researched work . . . MARIE ANTOINETTE is a heroic and tragic exercise in identification
Fraser sets out to rescue Marie Antoinette from the shadow of the guillotine, and she does this with resounding success
[Fraser] has written a fine biography . . . A fine and rewarding book