Latest News from Amanda Foreman

October 2009

October 23, 2009,
Women's Hour - BBC
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2009_42_fri.shtml

Amanda joined Michael Freedland, author of Witch-hunt in Hollywood, to speak about Hollywood and the Communist scare of the 1940's and 1950's.

October 22, 2009,
Biography Prize Dinner
Amanda gave a speech at the Biographers' Club Prize dinner at Banqueting House, London.

April 2009

April 11, 2009,
HOW WOMEN AUTHORS “FEMINISED THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN"
British history has become “feminised” by female authors who concentrate on subjects such as the six wives of Henry VIII rather than the king himself, Dr. David Starkey has said.

Speaking before the launch of a Channel 4 series to mark the 500th anniversary of the Tudor monarch’s accession to the throne, Starkey said he found it “bizarre” that so much historical effort was focused on the monarch’s wives.

In an interview with the Radio Times, out today, Starkey said: “One of the great problems has been that Henry, in a sense, has been absorbed by his wives. Which is bizarre.

“But it’s what you expect from feminised history, the fact that so many of the writers who write about this are women and so much of their audience is a female audience. Unhappy marriages are big box office.”

He said that in his new series, Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant, “we’re trying to say, ‘Hang on a minute, Henry is centre stage/’

“This is Henry – wives appear simply to explain or complicate the story of Henry. This is his development, his psychology and, above all, why he matters.”

Prominent female authors to write about Henry VIII and the Tudors include Lady Antonia Fraser, whose titles include the best-selling account The Six Wives of Henry VIII’ Alison Weir, who wrote a book bearing the same title; and Jessie Childs, author of the award-winning Henry VIII’s Last Victim. Talking to The Daily Telegraph, Starkey said that while writing about Henry VIII, “even I fell into the trap of subjugating the history of Henry ..... to that of his wives”.

He said he did so because “they are a gift to the writer – you end up with six stories for the price of one”. But he warned that the “soap opera” of Henry’s personal life should come second to the political consequences of his rule, such as the Reformation and the break with Rome.

Starkey went further by saying that today’s historians and biographers risked exaggerating the role of women in history. “If you are to do a proper history of Europe before the last five minutes, it is a history of white males because they were the power players, and to pretend anything else is to falsify.”

For example, while he considered Elizabeth I to be a great monarch, “the way she is presented as some sort of female icon is ludicrous”.

Another “feminising” book was Amanda Foreman’s biography Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, upon which the Academy Award-winning film The Duchess was based.

Susan Roland, author of The Pirate Queen; Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventures, disagreed with Dr. Starkey’s analysis.

She said: “The fact that more women are looking at history doesn’t mean that we are rewriting history, it is that we are looking at things we haven’t looked at before.” Earlier this month, Dr. Starkey said he believed Henry VIII’s handwriting showed he had an “emotionally incontinent” personality because he was brought upon a female-dominated household.

April 08, 2009,
Recent Lectures
Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY - April 4, 2009

University Club, New York City -- April 6, 2009

April 08, 2009,
National Book Awards for 2009
Amanda Foreman has been selected to be a judge on the US National Book Awards for 2009

November 2008

November 17, 2008,
Book News
14th September - 'The Duchess' becomes the Sunday Times number 1 best seller in England, and enters the New York Times list at number 16

August 2008

August 19, 2008,
Talk and Book Signing

September 15, 2008, 7pm
461 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

September 17, 2008, 7pm
1360 Westwood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024

August 01, 2008,
New web site launched
Web site redesigned and completed prior to the premier of "The Duchess"