Product Description

Antonia Fraser's Warrior Queens are those women who have both ruled and led in war. They include Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I, Isabella of Spain, the Rani of Jhansi, and the formidable Queen Jinga of Angola. With Boadicea as the definitive example, her female champions from other ages and civilisations make a fascinating and awesome assembly. Yet if Boadicea's apocryphal chariot has ensured her place in history, what are the myths that surround the others? And how different are the democratically elected if less regal warrior queens of recent times: Indira Ghandi and Golda Meir? This remarkable book is much more than a biographical selection. It examines how Antonia Fraser's heroines have held and wrested the reins of power from their (consistently male) adversaries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120572 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

About the Author
Antonia Fraser is the author of many widely acclaimed historical works including the biographies, CROMWELL: OUR CHIEF OF MEN, KING CHARLES II and THE GUNPOWDER PLOT (CWA Non-Fiction Gold Dagger; St Louis Literary Award). She has written five highly praised books which focus on women in history, THE WEAKER VESSEL: WOMEN'S LOT IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND (Wolfson Award for History, 1984), THE WARRIOR QUEENS: BOADICEAS CHARIOT, THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII, MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE JOURNEY (Franco-British Literary Prize 2001), which was made into a film by Sofia Coppola in 2006 and now most recently LOVE AND LOUIS XIV: THE WOMEN IN THE LIFE OF THE SUN KING. Antonia Fraser was made CBE in 1999, and awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2000. She lives in London and is currently working on a biography of Queen Elizabeth I. She was married to Harold Pinter who died on Christmas Eve 2008 and has eighteen grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

A great book - with a slow start
This is a fascinating book, which brings to life a whole range of great female leaders - rescuing several from insulting obscurity.

The catch, unfortunately, is a couple of quite difficult chapters to introduce the book. The concept of the duality of a female leader as a real figure signified by 'Boudica' and the creature of legend 'Boadicea' is clever and sustained convincingly throughout the book, it's unfortunate that the exposition of the theory is such heavy going. Boadicea, for me anyway, is one of the least interesting figures in the book. Largely, I guess from the familarlity of her legend and the stage on which it was played.

That aside, the book is full of fascinating detail about a whole range of figures from varied historical periods and from across the world. Personal favourites of mine are Tamara of Georgia and Zenobia.

An entertaining book up to a point
This book gives a fairly entertaining account of the lives of some little known women in history (such as Tomyris of the Massagetai, Zenobia of Palmyra, Matilda of Tuscany, Queen Jinga of Angola and Queen Louise of Prussia) on whom there is perhaps not enough material to warrant full biographies. Fraser also deals with better known figures such as Elizabeth I, Isabella of Spain and Margaret Thatcher.

The various chapters are all linked by the theory that such "warrior queens" have a lot in common with each other when it comes to their contemporaries' and posterity's treatment of them. Fraser uses the figure of Boadicea, to whose life and legend she returns in each chapter, to provide this link.

Although I felt it didn't really work, I respected the author's attempt to synthesise the material with some overarching theories on the nature of female rule. However, the terminology she uses to describe the characteristics of warrior queens (such as appendage syndrome, voracity syndrome, "only a weak woman" syndrome) seemed a little forced at times. Moreover her spurious distinction between "Boudica" to describe the historical Queen of the Iceni and "Boadicea" to describe the legendary figure which lives on in literature and the popular conciousness, was a little annoying.

At two places in the book Fraser stated things that were factually incorrect. The first instance of this was on p. 224 she writes that Miguel, the Portugese prince who could have united Iberia into one kingdom had he survived infancy, was the son of Isabella I's daughter Maria. In fact he was the son of Isabella's eldest daughter, Isabella. Secondly, on p. 279 she states that Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia was Catherine the Great's mother-in-law. In fact Elizabeth was the aunt, not mother, of Catherine's husband. Such errors were downright shoddy from a historical biographer of Fraser's (supposed) ability.

I'm glad I only read this book on the train on the way to work rather than saving it as a holiday or weekend read, because it was entertaining only insofar as I didn't think too much about it. Having said that I recently gave Fraser a second chance by buying her biography of Mary Queen of Scots in a discount book shop for 3 pounds. I'm hoping this will redeem her.