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    The First Iron Lady: A Life of Caroline of Ansbach
    Unavailable
    The First Iron Lady: A Life of Caroline of Ansbach
    Unavailable
    The First Iron Lady: A Life of Caroline of Ansbach
    Audiobook12 hours

    The First Iron Lady: A Life of Caroline of Ansbach

    Written by Matthew Dennison

    Narrated by Clare Corbett

    3.5/5

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    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    'A brilliant study of a brilliant woman' LUCY WORSLEY

    History has forgotten Caroline of Ansbach, yet in her lifetime she was compared frequently to Elizabeth I and considered by some as ‘the cleverest queen consort Britain ever had’.

    The intellectual superior of her buffoonish husband George II, Caroline is credited with hastening the Enlightenment to Britain through her sponsorship of red-hot debates about science, religion, philosophy and the nature of the universe. Encouraged by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, she championed inoculation; inspired by her friends Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, she mugged up on Newtonian physics; she embraced a salon culture which promoted developments in music, literature and garden design; she was a regular theatre-goer who loved the opera, gambling and dancing. Her intimates marvelled at the breadth of her interests. She was, said Lord Egmont, ‘curious in everything’.

    Caroline acted as Regent four times while her husband returned to Hanover, and during those periods she possessed authority over all domestic matters. No subsequent royal woman has exercised power on such a scale. So why has history forgotten this extraordinary queen?

    In this magnificent biography, the first for over seventy years, Matthew Dennison seeks to reverse this neglect. The First Iron Lady uncovers the complexities of Caroline’s multifaceted life: the child of a minor German princeling who, through intelligence, determination and a dash of sex appeal, rose to occupy one of the great positions of the world and did so with distinction, élan and a degree of cynical realism. It is a remarkable portrait of an eighteenth-century woman of great political astuteness and ambition, a radical icon of female power.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateNov 2, 2017
    ISBN9780008122003
    Unavailable
    The First Iron Lady: A Life of Caroline of Ansbach
    Author

    Matthew Dennison

    Matthew Dennison is the author of seven critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, including Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West, a Book of the Year in The Times, Spectator, Independent and Observer. His most recent book is Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter. He is a contributor to Country Life and Telegraph.

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    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      Any serious book which extends wider knowledge of Queen Caroline, consort of George II, is welcome. This work is good in parts. I would pick out as the strengths the earlier parts of the book, dealing with Caroline's childhood and then the period after marriage before her husband became king. The section from 1727 to 1737 is much weaker, being episodic and pretty lightweight on the political side (eg interactions with Walpole). It is also not very detailed about relations with Caroline's eldest son Frederick, and the end section is very abrupt. However a good picture is given overall of Caroline's marriage and her ambivalent relationship with her boorish husband.More trivial matters - the title is ill-chosen, and an editor really ought to have cut back the author's obsessive references to Caroline's bosom. But the epilogue is touching.