Donalda Peters has one of those annoying, tight, dry, upper-crust British voices that make the listener feel like a disobedient child being lectured by a menacing nanny.

Alas, the narrator is so unpleasant that I abandoned this book several times in frustration. Whatever her shallow moments, Fraser's Marie Antoinette has wisdom, steel and immense loyalty.

We then follow Marie Antoinette from her arrival at the French court, where courtiers compete for the right to help her dress and privacy becomes a distant memory, to her affectionate but passionless marriage to the Dauphin (unconsummated for seven years) to her frivolous years as a fashion goddess, gambler and party animal and her final years as a woman who faced slander, intrigue, defamation and treason charges with dignity and grace. Fraser takes us into the life of the young 'Antoine,' the daughter of the strong, hands-on empress of Austria, Maria-Teresa, who has raised all her children to be rulers and consorts. The book was adapted to film in 2006 with Kirsten Dunst and Jacob Schwartzman.Antonia Fraser has an amazing knack for writing biographies that are both impeccably researched and absolutely entertaining to read, and Marie Antoinette is no exception. The result is an utterly riveting and intensely moving book by one of our finest biographers. Drawing on a wealth of family letters and other archival materials, Antonia Fraser successfully avoids the hagiography of some the French queen s admirers and the misogyny of many of her critics.

For centuries since, she has been the object of debate, speculation, and the fascination so often accorded illustrious figures in history.Īntonia Fraser’s lavish and engaging portrait excites compassion and regard for the queen, immersing the reader not only in the coming-of-age of a graceful woman, but in the culture of an unparalleled time and place.īrilliantly written, Marie Antoinette is a work of impeccable scholarship. France’s iconic queen, Marie Antoinette, wrongly accused of uttering the infamous 'Let them eat cake,' was alternately revered and reviled during her lifetime.

Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser