Quotes from Amanda Foreman

From Lady Carlisle's trip to Moscow in 1663 to Veronica Atkinson's tour of duty during the 1989 Romanian revolution, it is clear that very little has changed. Four hundred years of innovation, liberation, and improvement clearly bypassed the Foreign Office while making its rounds through Westminster.

What if everything you were told about the female was wrong?

Foot-binding, which started out as a fashionable impulse, became an expression of Han identity after the Mongols invaded China in 1279. The fact that it was only performed by Chinese women turned the practice into a kind of shorthand for ethnic pride.

Politics is my second passion, but as a historian, you have to be genuinely neutral. You have failed in your primary duty as a historian if you are one side or the other.

I go into the local chemist, and I can hear people saying, 'Oh my Gaaahd - it's Lisa Kudrow!' And there's a famous Amanda Foreman, an actress two years older than me, who appears in 'Private Practice'.

One of the reasons it is considered such a privilege to sit on a Man Booker jury is because it is famously rigorous. The judging is not a gig for lightweights. Not only are all five judges expected to have read all 155 books from beginning to end, but they have to be able to talk fluently about every book at length.

Today, we are fortunate that the historical novel has reached such extraordinary heights of technical mastery. The ability of society to connect with the past holds out the greatest hope for it being able to embrace the future.

For America, Britain has never been more than a strategic player, and when it suits them to use us, then there's been a rapprochement. But if it doesn't suit them, you're kicked out the door. In 1860, America was like a big, spoilt teenager trying to get away from its parent.

Every now and then, a writer emerges who just gets better and better. These are the really exciting ones to encounter. Their novels carry the promise of so much more to come. Warwick Collins is one such writer.

Almost the first thing Obama did in the White House was to return the bust of Winston Churchill to the British embassy. That suggests a major re-ordering of things. It'll be fascinating to see what happens from now on. It was a genuine break with the recent past - perhaps to re-connect with the past past.

The one cheering aspect of 'Daughters of Britannia' is the extraordinary tenacity and resilience of Hickman's women.

When Napoleon abdicated in April 1814, Britain expected that America would soon lose heart and surrender, too. From then on, London's chief aims were to bring a swift conclusion to the war and capture as much territory as possible in order to gain the best advantage in the inevitable peace talks.

For a country that makes such a fuss about love on the 14th of February, America has a funny way of showing it on the other 364 days of the year.

Faro is a game of chance, essentially, with no skill involved. You bet against the bank, and the bank almost always wins.

For centuries, divorce in the West was a male tool of control - a legislative chastity belt designed to ensure that a wife had one master, while a husband could enjoy many mistresses. It is as though, having denied women their cake for so long, the makers have no wish to see them enjoy it.

Contrary to popular belief, Henry VIII did not divorce any of his wives. He had sought an annulment from Catherine of Aragon - which he finally awarded to himself after the pope's continued refusal. When it came to Anne's turn, Henry took the easy route by having her found guilty of treason.

In 1861, Bachofen published his radical thesis that the Amazons were not a myth but a fact. In his view, humanity started out under the rule of womankind and only switched to patriarchy at the dawn of civilization.

I'd gone to Oxford to do graduate studies in the history of the slave trade, but I came across Georgiana's letters, gave up that thesis, and wrote one on her instead. When I learned that Georgiana's great-nephews supported opposite sides in the American Civil War, I knew this would be the perfect sequel.

When I read 'The Master', I felt that I had read a true classic. It's so rare nowadays that you have that feeling: it was a privilege to read it.

When I read the news that Wonder Woman was going to be resurrected for a blockbuster movie in 2016, 'Batman vs. Superman', it made me excited - and anxious. Would the producers give her a role as fierce as her origins - and maybe some shoulder straps - or would she just be cartoon eye candy?

The creators of Wonder Woman had no interest in proving an actual link to the past. In some parts of the academic world, however, the historical existence of the Amazons, or any matriarchal society, has long been a raging issue.

What makes 'The Marriage of Souls' such a wonderful book is Collins's intricate reconstruction of the late eighteenth-century world. Simplicity and philosophy are the hallmarks of eighteenth-century art and architecture. The classically pure lines look deceptively simple and unburdened by heavy symbolism or imagery.

It might sound strange to describe New Yorkers as insecure when they delight so much in the cult of success. The display of wealth here, especially new wealth, is indeed wonderfully frank, from the super-long limousines which clog up the roads to the voluptuous fur coats that adorn both men and women.

The American war of 1861-65 is recent enough to be embedded still in cultural memory.