Amanda Foreman
Amanda Foreman is the author of the award-winning best seller, ‘Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire'.
She is the daughter of Carl Foreman, the Oscar-winning screen writer of many film classics including, The Bridge on the River Kwai, High Noon, and The Guns of Navarone.
She was born in London, brought up in Los Angeles, and educated in England. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University in New York.
She received her doctorate in Eighteenth-Century British History from Oxford University in 1998.
‘Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire’ was a number one best seller in England, and best seller for many weeks in the United States. It has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Danish. The book was nominated for several awards and won the Whitbread Prize for Best Biography in 1999.
Since the publication of "Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire", Amanda Foreman has worked as a presenter on English television and radio. She also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
‘Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire’ has inspired a television documentary, a radio play starting Dame Judi Dench; and a movie, titled ‘The Duchess’, staring Keira Knightly and Ralph Fiennes.
The book has recently been translated into Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, Turkish, Korean and Mandarin Chinese
Amanda is currently living in New York with her husband and five children.
She has been working on her second book for the past ten years. Called ‘A World on Fire’ the book tells the remarkable story of the British men and women who volunteered their services during the American Civil War.
It will be published by Penguin (UK) and Random House (US) in October 2010."
Radio, Film and Television:
- 2009
Women's Hour - BBC
How the Hollywood film industry was affected by the Communist scare of the 1940s & 50s.
The McCarthy witch-hunts have become known as one of the most shameful periods in American history. During the beginnings of the Cold War in the 1940s & 50s the search for ‘Reds under the bed’ began. Led by the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy it was felt most fiercely in Hollywood where the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee were carried out under the full glare of the media. Over 300 people in the entertainment industry including Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Carl Foreman and high profile women like Lillian Hellman, and Dorothy Parker were blacklisted because of their beliefs - real or suspected and were denied employment. Jenni is joined by Amanda Foreman, daughter of the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Carl Foreman and biographer of Georgiana the Duchess of Devonshire, and Michael Freedland, author of Witch-hunt in Hollywood. to look back at this period. - 2003
Wellington's Women - Channel Four, (Diverse Productions)
(writer and presenter) "The Duke of Wellington is famous as a great soldier and the hero of Waterloo. But not all the Iron Duke's conquests were military. Away from the macho world of war and politics, Wellington was very much a lady's man. In Wellington's Women, award winning historian Amanda Foreman explores the story behind the military - the unfaithful husband, the loyal friend, the passionate lover. "
- 2001
Queen Victoria - BBC Radio 4
(presenter) A review of the BBC radio programme 'Queen Victoria'
There’s nothing like an anniversary to bring out the best in Radio Four, as we’ve been hearing for the past week. To mark Queen Victoria’s death on 22 January, 1901 the network broadcast several programmes about her life and times with a splendid raid on the BBC archives for Queen Victoria, an hour-long account of her thoughts, feelings and 64-year reign.........................
- 1999
The Secret History: The People's Duchess - Channel 4 (directed by Justin Hardy)
(consultant)
- 1998
BBC Radio Documentary, ‘The History of the Temperance Movement’
(presenter) - BBC Television, News Night, ‘The Abolition of the House of Lords: What the Future Holds’
(presenter)
Amanda Foreman can be contacted via her agents in the UK and the USA
| The Wylie Agency, 250 West 57th, Suite 2114, New York, New York, 10107 USA E-mail: mail@wylieagency.com |
The Wylie Agency, 17 Bedford Sq London, WC1B 3JA 0207 908 5901 UK E-mail: mail@wylieagency.co.uk |
