Marie Antoinette
In a programme first broadcast in November 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess Maria Antonia, child bride of the future French King Louis XVI. Their marriage was an attempt to bring about a major change in the balance of power in Europe and to undermine the influence of Prussia and Great Britain, but she had no say in the matter and was the pawn of her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa. She fulfilled her allotted role of supplying an heir, but was sent to the guillotine in 1793 in the French Revolution, a few months after her husband, following years of attacks on her as a woman who, it was said, betrayed the King and as a foreigner who betrayed France to enemy powers. When not doing these wrongs, she was said to be personally bankrupting France. Her death shocked royal families throughout Europe, and she became a powerful symbol of the consequences of the Revolution.
→ Listen on BBC Sounds website
Guests
- Catriona Seth
5 episodes
Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford - Katherine Astbury
4 episodes
Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick -
David McCallam No other episodes
Reader in French Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Sheffield
Reading list
-
Marie Antoinette's Darkest Days: Prisoner no. 280 in the Conciergerie
Will Bashor (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) Google Books → -
How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette, the Stolen Diamonds and the Scandal that Shook the French Throne
Jonathan Beckman (John Murray, 2014) Google Books → -
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution
Jack R. Censer and Lynn Hunt (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) -
A Day with Marie-Antoinette
Helene Delalex (Flammarion, 2015) Google Books → -
I Love You Madly: Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen: The Secret Letters
Evelyn Farr (Peter Owen Publishers, 2016) Google Books → -
Marie-Antoinette: The Journey
Antonia Fraser (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001) Google Books → -
Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen
Dena Goodman (ed.) (Routledge, 2003) Google Books → -
The Life of Louis XVI
John Hardman (Yale University Press, 2016) Google Books → -
Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution
Joan B. Landes (Cornell University Press, 1988) Google Books → -
Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France
Evelyne Lever (Piatkus, 2006) Google Books → -
Jane Austen and the French Revolution
Warren Roberts (The Athlone Press, 2000) Google Books → -
Marie Antoinette: Anthologie et Dictionnaire
Catriona Seth (Robert Laffont, 2006) Google Books → -
The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie Antoinette
Chantal Thomas (trans. by Julie Rose) (Zone Books, 2001) Google Books → -
Farewell, My Queen
Chantal Thomas (Simon & Schuster, 2004) Google Books → -
Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution
Caroline Weber (Picador, 2007) Google Books →
Related episodes
-
Maria Theresa
22 Oct, 2020 940 History of Europe -
Mary, Queen of Scots
2 Jul, 2020 940 History of Europe -
Margaret of Anjou
24 May, 2018 940 History of Europe -
The Monarchy
10 Jun, 1999 940 History of Europe -
St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
27 Nov, 2003 270 History of Christianity -
Eleanor of Aquitaine
28 Jan, 2016 940 History of Europe -
Marguerite de Navarre
23 Nov, 2023 840 French and related literatures -
The French Revolution’s Legacy
14 Jun, 2001 940 History of Europe -
Olympe de Gouges
21 Apr, 2022 940 History of Europe -
Germaine de Stael
16 Nov, 2017 840 French and related literatures
Programme ID: m000117y
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000117y
Auto-category: 944.04 (French Revolution, 1789-1799)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. Marie Antoinette was born in 1755 in Vienna, the 15th child of the Empress Maria Teresa and the Holy Roman Emperor, one of the most powerful rulers in Europe.