Antonia Fraser is the author of many widely acclaimed historical works which have been international bestsellers. She was awarded the Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2000 and was made a DBE in 2011 for services to literature. Her previous books include MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, KING CHARLES II, THE WEAKER VESSEL: WOMAN'S LOT IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND which won the Wolfson History Prize, MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE JOURNEY, PERILOUS QUESTION; THE DRAMA OF THE GREAT REFORM BILL 1832 and THE KING AND THE CATHOLICS: THE FIGHT FOR RIGHTS 1829. MUST YOU GO?, a memoir of her life with Harold Pinter, was published in 2010, and MY HISTORY; A MEMOIR OF GROWING UP in 2015. She lives in London. Visit Antonia Fraser's website at www.antoniafraser.com
A zig-zagging Shakespearean drama, played out in the highest echelons of fashionable Georgian society . . . Fraser packs Lamb's life into short, sharp book which can be devoured in an afternoon. She has an eye for delightful detail which paints a colourful picture of the Georgian world . . . This is an expertly crafted, scholarly book, which not only examines the playful though ultimately tragic life of Caroline Lamb, but celebrates her imperishable spirit too -- Alice Loxton * Daily Telegraph * Sparklingly succinct ... Our Chief of Readable Historians -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Times * Characteristically readable, accomplished and in places positively revolutionary ... Fraser shows that she has more élan and attack - or passion and sense - than writers a third her age. Should this be her final sally, it is as inimitable and impressive as anything in her distinguished bibliography -- Alexander Larman * Spectator * Fraser's major achievement is to invest Caroline Lamb's life with a long-overdue sense of proportion ... Fraser writes with charm, empathy and the kind of readability that makes the findings of modern scholarship easier to swallow. And there can be no doubt that her understanding of Caroline owes something to a kind of wisdom derived from her own experience ... A wonderful swansong -- Mark Bostridge * The Oldie * [Fraser is] a meticulous researcher and an agile, vigorous writer . . . She wisely resists any temptation to hold up Lamb as a feminist heroine (which she was not), while acknowledging the constraints placed on her because she was a woman -- Clare McHugh * Washington Post * Fraser approaches Lady Caroline Lamb as an eminent historian of the British era of reform, and a major biographer of complex, victimised women including Mary, Queen of Scots and Marie Antoinette. She privileges the evidence of primary sources to recover Lamb the ambitious, politically informed writer from the sensationalist anecdotes recycled by Byron biographers and historians of her husband's political career . . . Through her determined pursuits of intellectual and sensual experience, Lamb the entitled socialite gained what Fraser recognises as the 'wry self-knowledge' to articulate the paradoxes she inhabited as the early victim of a celebrity culture still blighted by sexual double standards * Irish Times *