Quotes from Amanda Foreman

Teach her story to future generations, and at least the moral debt owed to Jean McConville can be repaid. Jean McConville. Jean McConville. Jean McConville.

I was a graduate student at Oxford when I discovered Georgiana.

I think that once you become a parent, you cease to think of yourself as a hero or heroine.

A small foot in China, no different from a tiny waist in Victorian England, represented the height of female refinement. For families with marriageable daughters, foot size translated into its own form of currency and a means of achieving upward mobility. The most desirable bride possessed a three-inch foot, known as a 'golden lotus.'

The narrative of 'man the hunter' presupposes that men provided the nutrition, invented the tools, and established social organization and communication through the hunt, and that women were just sitting by the fire waiting for evolution to drag them out by the hair in the 1960s in order to participate.

When women do take on traditionally male subjects, certain male colleagues can seem affronted that a woman has dared to trespass on their subject. I could given you dozens of examples, but here's one: Max Hastings's review in the 'Sunday Times' in 2009 of Miranda Carter's book 'The Three Emperors'.

In 1961, an official U.S. commission oversaw thousands of events to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the American Civil War. All 50 states joined in, but not surprisingly, the biggest events took place in the 11 southern states that made up the defeated Confederacy.

With every generation comes a new wave of hopefuls: small-town escapees, European refugees, disaffected Londoners.

George III's ability to step in and out of his role fed stories of commoners chancing upon a sturdy gentleman by the wayside who later turned out to be the king.

I was there for the making of Young Winston, but guns kept going off. I went 'Waaaaah,' and someone said, 'Please get the child off the set.'

All nations struggle in the aftermath of civil war. More than 100 years after the English Civil War, for instance, any prelate who was 'enthusiastic' about religion attracted censure and suspicion.

It isn't enough for a book to be transporting or entertaining; it must also come from a place of knowledge and an understanding of aesthetics. Even where a longlisted book wears its craftsmanship lightly, the power of the writing shines through.

We need to feminise history because we are 50 per cent of the population, and our story is just as interesting.

As a working mother, wife, daughter, and daughter-in-law, I have to make constant moral choices. Every choice I make results in someone else suffering.

I feel I've done some things in life too late and others too early

If everyone followed through on their resolutions, the conseqences for humanity would be dire: The fast food industry would collapse, the gyms would become unbearably crowded, and lifestyle magazines would have nothing left to say.

One bag contained the Confederate flag and a pouch filled with Virginia soil. Georgiana intended to give birth with the flag draped symbolically above the bed and the soil placed underneath to ensure that the baby was a true Virginian.)

Never trust a man with another's secret," she is reputed to have said, "never trust a woman with her own.

when others draw you out of your own character, and make you assume one that is quite a stranger to you, it is difficult to distinguish you under the disguise

Biographers are notorious for falling in love with their subjects. It is the literary equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome,

Lyons's views on America were generally in keeping with those of the Foreign Office: he was well disposed to its people, but he thought that democracy made the government weak and handed too much power to the violent and ignorant elements of society.

trying his best to discourage them,

The feeling is the less to be combated, because it is utterly unreasonable and utterly regardless of facts or arguments.

Despite the ever-increasing financial pressures experienced by writers and the ever-decreasing space afforded by the media to books, writers are still willing to aim for quality and to take risks.