Antonia Fraser

I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.

If I write that it was a cold day, you can be sure I know it was a cold day because Pepys told us.

That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.

King Charles II liked women's company and well as making love to them.

Mary Queen of Scots was my first love, and that is always something special.

I think mine is the fullest and most plausible account of what went on in Marie Antoinette's life.

It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.

Normally I make myself swim, do exercises. For zest I like going to the cinema.

Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.

The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!

I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful book.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.