Antonia Fraser

In the eighteenth century, the Catholics of England lacked many basic freedoms under the law: they could not serve in political office, buy or inherit land, or be married by the rites of their own religion. So virulent was the sentiment against Catholics that, in 1780, violent riots erupted in...

Her royal birth gave her claim to the thrones of two nations; her marriage to the young French dauphin promised to place a third glorious crown on her noble head. Instead, Mary Stuart became the victim of her own impulsive heart....

This magnificent story of 1,000 years of English history is told through the lives and deeds of Kings and Queens...

The six wives of Henry VIII have become defined in a popular sense not so much by their lives as by the way these lives ended. But, as Antonia Fraser conclusively proves, they were rich and feisty characters.

The superb historian and biographer Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette, casts new light on the splendor and the scandals of the reign of Louis XIV in this dramatic, illuminating look at the women in his life. The self-proclaimed Sun King, Louis XIV ruled over the most glorious and...

Perilous Question features an eventful, violent often overlooked period of British history....

The superb historian and biographer Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette, casts new light on the splendor and the scandals of the reign of Louis XIV in this dramatic, illuminating look at the women in his life. The self-proclaimed Sun King, Louis XIV ruled over the most glorious and...

Beset by the personal cruelties perpetrated by her husband and a society whose rules were set against her, Caroline Norton chose to fight. She channeled her energies in an area of much-needed reform: the rights of a married woman and specifically those of a mother....

Mary Queen of Scots passed her childhood in France and married the Dauphin to become Queen of France at the age of sixteen. Widowed less than two years later, she returned to Scotland as Queen after an absence of thirteen years. Her life then entered its best known phase: the early struggles...

When Antonia Fraser met Harold Pinter she was a celebrated biographer and he was Britain's finest playwright....

Marie Antoinette's dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions....

With a narrative that grips the reader like a detective story, Antonia Fraser brings the characters and events of the Gunpowder Plot to life. Dramatically recreating the conditions and motives that surrounded the fateful night of 5 November 1605, she unravels the tangled web of religion and...

With a narrative that grips the reader like a detective story, Antonia Fraser brings the characters and events of the Gunpowder Plot to life....

Poet, pamphleteer and artist's muse, Caroline Norton dazzled 19th-century society with her vivacity and intelligence. After her marriage in 1828 to the MP George Norton, she continued to attract friends and admirers to her salon in Westminster, which included the young Disraeli....

The story of Catholic Emancipation begins with the Anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780, fuelled by a reduction in Penal Laws against Catholics harking back to the 16th century. Fifty years later, the passing of the Emancipation Bill was hailed as a 'bloodless revolution'....

Marie Antoinette's dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions....

Antonia Fraser's vividly compelling biography animates the life of 'a free spirit' who was far more than mad, bad and dangerous to know....

Love and Louis XIV centres around the Sun King and his relationships with numerous fascinating women....

Antonia Fraser deals with each woman in turn with sympathy - the sympathy they deserve for having had the unenviable fate of being Henry's wife....

Antonia Fraser's memoir describes growing up in the 1930s and 1940s but its real concern is with her growing love of history....