Annelise freisenbruch photo

  • Debut children's author Annelise Gray, She's previously published a history of the women of the Roman Empire and a crime novel set in the Roman Republic.
  • Annelise was born in Bermuda in , and studied Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, receiving her PhD in
  • The best piece of writing advice I've ever read is this: 'Writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair'.

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    First Ladies of Rome, The The Women Behind the Caesars

    December 26,
    This is a poor attempt at rewriting history

    There is a recurring narrative the author quietly harps on as well as tools she uses to dismiss any opposition to her narrative. In what I'll call "Annie's complaint" in her honor, this narrative is: all women of antiquity were unfairly afflicted with "negative stereotypes" and that no matter who the author is, they are completely unreliable because of this. Yes, because no women in history has ever done anything bad or wrong, Tacitus is the same as the notoriously unreliable author of the Historia Augusta. This is a recurring theme without any evidence beyond claims that these "stereotypes" were no more than tropes to dismiss women in positions of Imperial influence and/or authority. The men, however, are either self-glorifying "baby-faced" little boys or fierce barbarians who keep women down except when the women are too fierce to be kept down.

    It is true that sources

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    Caesars’ Wives: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire
    by Annelise Freisenbruch
    Buy this Book
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    An Exclusive Authorlink Interview with Annelise Freisenbruch,
    Author of Caesars’ Wives: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire.

     

     

     

     

    By Diane Slocum
    March

    Today’s desperate housewives have nothing on the women who supported or plotted against the Caesars of the Roman Empire. Freisenbruch follows the winding branches, more like a tangled grapevine than a family tree, which brought successive generations of wives, mothers and sisters to the exalted title of Augusta during years of Roman rule.

    “I had never heard of Galla Placidia, until a few years ago while working on a BBC docu-drama . . .”
    —FREISENBRUCH

     

     

     

    AUTHORLINK: How did your backg

  • annelise freisenbruch photo

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    Annelise Freisenbruch

    Annelise Freisenbruch was born in in Paget, Bermuda, and moved to the UK at the age of eight. She studied Classics to postgraduate level at Cambridge University, receiving a PhD in for her thesis on the correspondence between the långnovell emperor Marcus Aurelius and his tutor Cornelius Fronto. During that time, she also taught Classics at a private school in Cambridge. She has worked as a research assistant on a number of popular books and films about the ancient world, and regularly gives talks to schools about Classics in popular culture. Annelise Freisenbruch was the researcher to Bettany Hughes on her critically acclaimed book Helen of Troy (Vintage). She was also a specialist series researcher on the BBC1 docu-drama series Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, and is currently working on films on Attila the Hun and Spartacus for the BBC. Annelise holds a PhD in Classics from Cambridge University and has worked as a freelance history researcher in