I didn’t even notice I was doing this post on St Valentine Day, probably because I paid no attention to the celebration (sorry, Eros), but it comes out that at least one of this month’s choices is actually a good match.
1. I Love You Madly: Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen: The Secret Letters by Evelyn Farr. Yes, it was true: they were lovers indeed, and now somebody just proved it.
“For the first time an historian has compiled all the known letters between Swedish count Axel von Fersen and Marie-Antoinette, including six letters never before published. With unprecedented access to French and Swedish archives, Evelyn Farr has proven beyond doubt one of history’s greatest romances. Axel von Fersen was Queen Marie-Antoinette’s lover and loyal counsellor who gave her political advice from 1785 to the fall of the French monarchy at the time of the French Revolution. Evelyn Farr’s revelatory work on the subject also goes some way to proving that Count Fersen was in fact the biological father of Marie Antoinette’s two younger children. Farr reveals the lengths the couple went to conceal their affair; the use of code and invisible ink, the role of intermediaries, secret seals, double envelopes, codenames and the location of Fersen’s clandestine lodgings at Versailles. I Love You Madly is a meticulously researched and enjoyable study of a forbidden love at a time of revolution. The letters portray a rebellious and independent queen who risked everything and broke all the rules to love the man who succeeded in conquering her heart. “
2. Mémoires du cardinal de Richelieu: Premier volume 1610-1619 by Richelieu.
The great Cardinal needs no introduction, famous as he is due to both novels (Dumas) and history itself. But reading his own writing is absolutely fascinating.
3. White Mughals by William Dalrymple
This is by no means the first book I read written by Dalrymple (I have loved The Age of Kali), and it promises to be as entertaining.
“James Achilles Kirkpatrick was the British Resident at the court of Hyderabad when he met Khair un-Nissa – ‘Most Excellent among Women’ – the great-niece of the Prime Minister of Hyderabad. He fell in love with her and overcame many obstacles to marry her, converting to Islam and, according to Indian sources, becoming a double-agent working against the East India Company. It is a remarkable story, but such things were not unknown: from the early sixteenth century to the eve of the Indian Mutiny, the ‘white Mughals’ who wore local dress and adopted Indian ways were a source of embarrassment to successive colonial administrations. Dalrymple unearths such colourful figures as ‘Hindoo Stuart’, who travelled with his own team of Brahmins to maintain his temple of idols, and Sir David Auchterlony, who took all 13 of his Indian wives out for evening promenades, each on the back of her own elephant. In ‘White Mughals’, William Dalrymple discovers a world almost entirely unexplored by history, and places at its centre a compelling tale of seduction and betrayal.”
Happy Valentine everybody!