Marie Antoinette

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

Great news, we're reprinting already. Antonia's events have been going brilliantly with Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Sheffield Festivals still to come. Antonia is being interviewed for the GUARDIAN profile by Nick Wroe which will runon either the 24 or 31 August. She has also done an excellent interview withthe SUNDAY HERALD to publicise her event at the Edinburgh Festival in Augusttogether with one in the September issue of GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. Reviews have been wonderful and the has had numerous selections in the newspapers's summerreading round-ups: 'Fraser's book not only rescues the queen's battered reputation, it also offers a spellbinding portrait of life in the stultifying atmosphere of Versailles and goes a long way towards explaining the inevitability of the French Revolution.'THE MAIL ON SUNDAY 'This excellent biography'Ian Pindar, THE GUARDIAN 'this impeccably well-informed biography does justice tothe maligned Marie Antoinette.'Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, THE FINANCIAL TIMES ''it is in the weird detail of her (Marie Antoinette) life at court that many of its pleasures are to be found.'THE INDEPENDENT 'Antonia Fraser's credentials and experience as a biographer are undeniable.'THE SUNDAY TRIBUNE 'Antonia Fraser has written an absorbing, richly detailed and pleasingly illustrated new study of the French queen.'THE GOOD BOOK GUIDE 'The whole story, rivettingl

UK Kirkus review

Antonia Fraser has written an absorbing, richly detailed and pleasingly illustrated new study of the French Queen which is a careful rexamination of the stereotypical embodiment of wilful extravagance and flouncing arrogance. The 'journey' of the title, is that of the 14-year old princess from the Imperial palace in Vienna, via the Royal Court of her husband Louis XVI at Versailles to a 'squalid cell' in Paris prior to execution by guillotine, her head displayed on a spike to an uproarious crowd. There seems a terrible inevitability in the journey: Marie Antoinette was mistrusted in France from the start: vilified as 'L'Autrichienne', her task was impossible, to unite in the person of an heir the two warring nations of France and Austria. She thus became, in Antonia Fraser's judgement, 'the female scapegoat' for the ills and excesses of the Court, her extravagance legendary, though in fact modest in comparison to that of her husband and others at a court where display and the ability to dazzle equalled power. She was, Antonia Fraser concedes, frivolous, imprudent and weak, yet she was also intelligent, neither wanton, nor manipulative, and no, she never actually said 'let them eat cake' when the people asked for bread - this was an accusation flung at most 18th century foreign queens - though by 1793 had Mary Antoinette leaned from the window of her carriage and offered the starving poor a brioche, they would probably have spat on it, suspecting that it would be poisoned such was the hatred and fear of 'the royal monster'. (Kirkus UK)

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