In my recap of Wolf Hall, I alluded to a phase of Tudor dynasty obsession in which I devoured many biographies, the vast majority of which were written by Antonia Fraser, including her The Six Wives of Henry VIII. I found them at the Ann Arbor Public Library and knew very little about the author when I pulled them off the shelves, but that chance encounter sparked an Antonia Fraser devotion in which I regularly engage.

As if it's not enough that she's a terrific biographer and writer, she is also the widow of Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter; as the daughter of an Earl, is officially referred to with the honorific "Lady Antonia," and she once survived an IRA bombing with Caroline Kennedy. She has won a significant number of awards for her non-fiction writing, and has penned a series of detective novels. Likely of greatest interest to Bookhive readers is her biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey, which was the primary basis for the Sofia Coppola film 'Marie Antoinette.'