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

I realize that I had always in my heart of hearts planned to write a biography of Marie Antoinette.

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

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 hate the only one of my book jackets when I was made up professionally, my hair made into a smooth bell.

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

My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor.