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'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.

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

Amanda Foreman Quotes