Perilous Question: Reform or Revolution? Britain on the Brink, 1832 - Rilegato

Library Journal
In Fraser's latest work on British history, she deviates from biography (Mary, Queen of Scots; The Six Wives of Henry VIII) to tackle the perilous question” of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, seeking to get at the personalities involved in this historical moment and the reactions of people at the time Fraser moves the narrative along at a quick pace in order to give, as she says, a flavour of the times” The book is recommended for Fraser's fans and for British history enthusiasts.”

The Wharf (UK)
Antonia Fraser captures the febrile times with a kaleidoscope characters who leap off the page in their eminence, silliness and eloquence. This is a particular slice of history demanding a particular reader but it is edifying and breathless stuff and there are many lessons that our current ruling class could learn if they could tear themselves away from their expenses chits to make the effort.”

The New Yorker
Fraser writes energetically about the political wrangling, finding both humor and humanity in the struggle.”

Total Politics (UK)
"Perilous Question is a cracking good read and should be on every parliamentarian's summer reading list."

Kirkus Reviews
Engaging, elaborate and elegantly wrought.”

Evening Standard
A spirited attempt to bring the controversy and passion of the era to a new audience. Her prose is charming and fluent. She shows she has lost none of the touch that brought her fame as a popular historian.”

Telegraph
Antonia Fraser's superb narrative of the passing of the Bill, which, as well as providing incisive pen portraits of all the major protagonists, is expressive and elegiac of an age when, despite everything, enlightened rationality informed political discourse The 1820s and early 1830s have all too often been seen as a historical backwater between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the start of the Victorian era that began with the queen's accession in 1837. With Fraser's erudite and acute portrait of this age of reform, it won't be thought so anymore.”

Shelf Awareness for Readers
Political gerrymandering as historical thriller: Who would have guessed? In Perilous Question, Antonia Fraser makes precisely that leap--presenting the history behind Britain's Great Reform Act of 1832 in terms that are both historically thorough and deeply fascinating .With her usual perception and clarity, Fraser draws life from a seemingly dry topic, turning political history into real story.”

The Spectator
The final chapters of the book read like a thriller The book should be required reading for today's millionaire ministers who seem sadly lily-livered by contrast with Grey and his Whigs. This is history as it should be written: lively, witty and, above all, a cracking good read. I found it almost impossible to put down.”

The Express (UK)
"Do children at school still learn about the Great Reform Bill of 1832? . What I don't recall from school is how thoroughly entertaining it was. What a slice of human drama, how tense, how crucial and how very nearly it could have foundered, thereby propelling our nation into riot and revolution. For that we need impeccable historian Antonia Fraser, who invests such humanity in her huge cast of characters.”

Antonia Fraser has written several historical biographies which have been international bestsellers, since Mary, Queen of Scots published in 1969. These include Marie Antoinette, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and Cromwell. Other historical works include The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth Century England, and Faith and Treason: the Gunpowder Plot. Antonia Fraser was president of English Pen, the world-wide writers' organization for free speech, and is now a vice-president. She has received many prizes, including the Wolfson History Award, the Norton Medlicott Historical Association Medal, the Franco-British Literary Prize, and the St. Louis Literary Award. She was made a D.B.E (Dame) in 2011 for services to literature. She was married to the Nobel Laureate, Harold Pinter, who died in 2008.