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Article: Sex, lies and guillotines. (book review)
- Article from:
- The Mail on Sunday (London, England)
- Article date:
- June 17, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Solo Syndication Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: SIMON SEGAB MONTEFIORE
Marie Antoinette BY Antonia Fraser (Weidenfeld & Nicolson [pound]25) *****
The tragic life of Marie Antoinette is usually treated more as a cautionary tale than the life of a real woman.
Her story is used either to demonstrate that greed, frivolity, extravagance and lust among the great leads to justifiable revolution or to show the opposite - that the decency, grace and delicacy of an individual can easily be crushed by the brutish thuggery of the mob. This outstanding new study of the French queen effectively refutes both interpretations, replacing them with a portrait of a living woman.
She was born in ...