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Marie Antoinette

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780753813058

Price: £16.99

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‘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.

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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
Mark Bostridge, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
An authoritative, sympathetic and beautifully written life of the much maligned queen
Charles Osborne, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
[Fraser] has written a fine biography . . . A fine and rewarding book
Douglas Johnson, SPECTATOR
A superbly researched book which will clearly become the definitive work on the ill-fated queen
Margot Lawrence, CATHOLIC HERALD
Fraser is at her best here, lucid, authoritative and compassionate
Miranda Seymour, SUNDAY TIMES
A sparkling new biography . . . Antonia Fraser writes beautifully, with impressively shrewd judgement . . . This is a fine book and a very good read
Desmond Seward, DAILY MAIL
This beautifully paced, impeccably written biography is destined to generate the same success as Antonia Fraser's previous work. Don't miss it
Andrea Stuart, INDEPENDENT
Drama, betrayal, religion and sex, it's all here, adorned by often fascinating, at times esoteric detail
Hazel Mills, GUARDIAN
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.
Lucy Worsley, WAITROSE WEEKEND
Fraser sets out to rescue Marie Antoinette from the shadow of the guillotine, and she does this with resounding success
Ruth Scurr, THE TIMES
A hugely well-researched work . . . MARIE ANTOINETTE is a heroic and tragic exercise in identification
DAILY TELEGRAPH