Antonia Fraser has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.9★ across 17 ratings. The most-rated is Marie Antoinette.
Marie Antoinette
Summary
Marie Antoinette's dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions. To many people, she is still 'la reine mechante', whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: 'let them eat cake'. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny. In this biography Antonia Fraser examines her influence over the king, Louis XVI, the accusations and sexual slurs made against her, her patronage of the arts which enhanced French cultural life, her imprisonment, the death threats made against her, rumours of lesbian affairs, her trial (during which her young son was forced to testify to sexual abuse by his mother) and her eventual execution by guillotine in 1793.
©2002 Antonia Fraser (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Summary
"Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived." So the six wives of Henry VIII (Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Catherine Parr) have become defined in a popular sense - not so much by their lives as by the way their lives ended. In the same way, their characters are popularly portrayed as female stereotypes: the Betrayed Wife, the Temptress, the Good Woman, the Ugly Sister, the Bad Girl, and, finally, the Mother Figure. But, as Antonia Fraser brilliantly and conclusively proves, they were rich and feisty characters. They may have been victims of Henry's obsession with a male heir, but they were not willing victims. On the contrary, they exhibited remarkable degrees of spirit and defiance, of which women living now might still be proud. They displayed considerable strength and intelligence at a time when their sex supposedly possessed little of either. Antonia Fraser deals with each woman in turn with sympathy, the sympathy they deserve for having had the unenviable fate of being Henry's wife. Inevitably, there was great rivalry between them - so high were the stakes in the great game of marrying the king of England. There was jealousy too: the desperate jealousy of queens who found themselves abandoned, but also the sexual jealousy of the king who discovered himself betrayed. The story Antonia Fraser tells is romantic and cruel, funny and sad, dramatic and enthralling. This is historical biography at its best.
©1992 Antonia Fraser (P)2002 Orion Publishing Group Ltd.
Mary Queen of Scots
Summary
More than 400 years after her death, Mary Queen of Scots remains one of the most romantic and controversial figures in British history. Antonia Fraser's classic biography of her won the James Tait Prize when it was first published in 1969. It became an international best-seller and was translated into nine languages. Mary passed her childhood in France and married the Dauphin to become Queen of France at the age of 16. Widowed less than two years later, she returned to Scotland as Queen after an absence of 13 years. Her life then entered its best known phase: the early struggles with John Knox and the unruly Scottish nobility; the fatal marriage to Darnley and his mysterious death; her marriage to Bothwell, the chief suspect, that led directly to her long English captivity at the hands of Queen Elizabeth; the poignant and extraordinary story of her long imprisonment that ended with the labyrinthine Babington plot to free her, and her execution at the age of 44. Antonia Fraser's biography, four years in the writing, enters fully into the life of an historical figure who continues to capture the popular imagination. It provides a moving answer to the question, "What was Mary Queen of Scots really like?"
©1996 Antonia Fraser (P)2002 Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Love and Louis XIV
Summary
This audiobook centres around the Sun King and his relationship with numerous and fascinating women. Naturally dividing into five parts, it concentrates on the King's mother, Anne of Austria, to whom he was devoted; his first important mistress, Louise de la Valliere, who bore him several illegitimate children; Athenais Marquise de Montespan, who acted as unofficial Queen of Versailles until her involvement in the affair of poisons; Marie Therese, his wife, of course; and Madame de Maintenon, governess to the illegitimate royal children. The fifth part concentrates on his relations in old age with his daughters, granddaughters, and the wife of his grandson.Fraser vividly bring to life the vast edifice of Louis XIV's court - the magnificence, artistic splendour, elaborate ritual, and, in some cases, the absurdity and misery.
©2006 Antonia Fraser (P)2006 Orion Publishing Group Ltd