The First Iron Lady: A Life of Caroline of Ansbach
Written by Matthew Dennison
Narrated by Clare Corbett
3.5/5
()
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.
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.
Related to The First Iron Lady
Related audiobooks
The Prince Who Would Be King: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England's Most Notorious Royal Family Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mistress Anne Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Queen: The Life & Tragedy of the Prince Regent's Daughter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great Ladies: The Forgotten Witnesses to the Lives of Tudor Queens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meet the Georgians: Epic Tales from Britain’s Wildest Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Children of Henry VIII Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Princess Mary: The First Modern Princess Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Turbulent Crown: The Story of the Tudor Queens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter: A Biography of Princess Louise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family: The Despensers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLadies-in-Waiting: Women Who Served Anne Boleyn Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5To Catch A King: Charles II's Great Escape Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Isabella: She-Wolf of France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Plantagenet Princesses: The Daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Catherine: The Life of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Queens of the Crusades: Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Successors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Tudors: The Untold Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The First Elizabeth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Katherine Swynford Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Duchess Countess Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elizabeth of York Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daughter of Empire: My Life As a Mountbatten Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Life and Death of Ella Grand Duchess of Russia: A Romanov Tragedy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5History Revealed: Who Was the Bloodiest Tudor: Episode 29 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
European History For You
The War on the West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Project MK-Ultra: The History of the CIA’s Controversial Human Experimentation Program Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: with Pearl and Sir Orfeo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ancient Mythology: An Extensive Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Worship, Rituals and Beliefs of Ancient Myths Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History that Inspired Game of Thrones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of American Cemeteries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Napoleon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ghost Map Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reformation: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Templars: The History and the Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brothers and Wives: Inside the Private Lives of William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Teutonic Knights: A Military History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The First Iron Lady
9 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Any 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.