Free Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot by Antonia Fraser Page A
Authors: Antonia Fraser
Hastings; Mr Christopher Hibbert; Princess Antoinette Hohenlohe; Dr Lisa Jardine; Mr John Keegan; Lady Pansy Lamb; Professor Joyce Lebra-Chapman for illustrative material concerning the Rani of Jhansi; Professor Karl Leyser; Ms Sharon Macdonald; Miss Elizabeth Owles of the Moyses Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds; Dame Felicity (Hanbury) Peake for recollections of her wartime service; Diana Phipps; Mr C. A. Price; Mr Denis Richards; the Hon. Hannah Rothschild; Mr David Spanier; Ms Dale Spender; Emma Tennant; Mr Michael Trend; Mr Paul Usherwood; Ms Kaari Utrio; Marina Warner; and Simone Warner who was my wonderful charioteer in the summer of 1985 when we explored East Anglia.
I have received editorial suggestions and advice from a galaxy of stars in the firmament of publishing, including Robert Gottlieb; Christopher Falkus, Juliet Gardiner and Linden Lawson, all of Weidenfeld’s; Sunny Mehta of Knopf; and my agent Michael Shaw of Curtis Brown; Mr John Gillingham and Mr Alan Palmer provided helpful comments on the text; Ms Jane Blumberg checked the references and Mr Douglas Matthews of the London Library did the index: to each and all of these I have good reason to be profoundly grateful. As for Richard Bates, who created out of my unruly manuscript, with the aid of his word processor, the disks from which this book was set, it seems appropriate to quote the words of Henry James concerning art itself to express my thanks: ‘I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process’. Finally I must not forget the Home Team: from my son Orlando Fraser who did research for me at the Colindale Newspaper Library and elsewhere, and my daughter Flora Fraser Powell-Jones, always prepared to discuss the Classical world with energy, to my mother Elizabeth Longford, who may never have realized what an editorial burden lay ahead when she first encouraged me to read history. My husband Harold Pinter, although coming last in these acknowledgements, is always the first to read my work: no words of mine can express my debt tohim sufficiently, so I will use his to thank him for his support when I ventured into ‘quite remote … utterly foreign … territories’.
ANTONIA FRASER
St Cecilia’s Day 1986
Feast of St Joseph 1988
Illustrations
The bronze statue of Boadicea and her daughters, in a scythe-wheeled chariot, sculpted by Thomas Thornycroft between 1856 and 1885, and finally erected by the London County Council in 1902. The lines of William Cowper are inscribed upon the plinth:
Regions Caesar never knew
Thy Posterity shall sway.
A crater of 460 BC showing Sthenelus, a companion of Heracles, in his war against the Amazon women; encounters with Amazons were often used in Greek art to symbolize the Greeks’ victories over their male enemies.
Ptolemaic votive plaque believed to depict Cleopatra as a goddess.
The voluptuous European conception of Cleopatra; an engraving by J. Chapman of 1804.
Silver coin of Cleopatra (with Antony on the obverse) issued in Syria c . 34 BC.
Judith beheads Holofernes in a nineteenth-century engraving by Schnorr von Carolsfeld.
Although no authentic portrait or bust of Zenobia is known, her appearance can be imagined from that of this contemporary Palmyrene noblewoman; late third century AD .
A general view of the ruins of Palmyra today.
The romantic European image of Zenobia; an eighteenth-century engraving by William Sharp from a drawing by Michelangelo.
A nineteenth-century statue of Zenobia as a captive by Harriet Hosmer.
Semiramis, the legendary Queen of the Assyrians (based on Sammuramat, Babylonian widow of a ninth-century BC Assyrian king), seen in an engraving c . 1800.
The tomb of Longinus (a Thracian member of an auxiliary cavalry unit) which was defaced and cracked by the Britons during the sack of Colchester; the crouching figure – probably a representation of death – may have been mistaken by them for a symbol of subjugation.
A battle between the Romans and
I have received editorial suggestions and advice from a galaxy of stars in the firmament of publishing, including Robert Gottlieb; Christopher Falkus, Juliet Gardiner and Linden Lawson, all of Weidenfeld’s; Sunny Mehta of Knopf; and my agent Michael Shaw of Curtis Brown; Mr John Gillingham and Mr Alan Palmer provided helpful comments on the text; Ms Jane Blumberg checked the references and Mr Douglas Matthews of the London Library did the index: to each and all of these I have good reason to be profoundly grateful. As for Richard Bates, who created out of my unruly manuscript, with the aid of his word processor, the disks from which this book was set, it seems appropriate to quote the words of Henry James concerning art itself to express my thanks: ‘I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process’. Finally I must not forget the Home Team: from my son Orlando Fraser who did research for me at the Colindale Newspaper Library and elsewhere, and my daughter Flora Fraser Powell-Jones, always prepared to discuss the Classical world with energy, to my mother Elizabeth Longford, who may never have realized what an editorial burden lay ahead when she first encouraged me to read history. My husband Harold Pinter, although coming last in these acknowledgements, is always the first to read my work: no words of mine can express my debt tohim sufficiently, so I will use his to thank him for his support when I ventured into ‘quite remote … utterly foreign … territories’.
ANTONIA FRASER
St Cecilia’s Day 1986
Feast of St Joseph 1988
Illustrations
The bronze statue of Boadicea and her daughters, in a scythe-wheeled chariot, sculpted by Thomas Thornycroft between 1856 and 1885, and finally erected by the London County Council in 1902. The lines of William Cowper are inscribed upon the plinth:
Regions Caesar never knew
Thy Posterity shall sway.
A crater of 460 BC showing Sthenelus, a companion of Heracles, in his war against the Amazon women; encounters with Amazons were often used in Greek art to symbolize the Greeks’ victories over their male enemies.
Ptolemaic votive plaque believed to depict Cleopatra as a goddess.
The voluptuous European conception of Cleopatra; an engraving by J. Chapman of 1804.
Silver coin of Cleopatra (with Antony on the obverse) issued in Syria c . 34 BC.
Judith beheads Holofernes in a nineteenth-century engraving by Schnorr von Carolsfeld.
Although no authentic portrait or bust of Zenobia is known, her appearance can be imagined from that of this contemporary Palmyrene noblewoman; late third century AD .
A general view of the ruins of Palmyra today.
The romantic European image of Zenobia; an eighteenth-century engraving by William Sharp from a drawing by Michelangelo.
A nineteenth-century statue of Zenobia as a captive by Harriet Hosmer.
Semiramis, the legendary Queen of the Assyrians (based on Sammuramat, Babylonian widow of a ninth-century BC Assyrian king), seen in an engraving c . 1800.
The tomb of Longinus (a Thracian member of an auxiliary cavalry unit) which was defaced and cracked by the Britons during the sack of Colchester; the crouching figure – probably a representation of death – may have been mistaken by them for a symbol of subjugation.
A battle between the Romans and
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