Author Interview
LISA HILTON Alexander Larman meets the author of several books about femmes fatales, to find out how she deals with reviewers identifying her with her subjects
T
he historian and novelist Lisa Hilton should be best known for writing a variety of excellent, beautifully written and often very funny books, which have ranged from a definitive biography of Elizabeth I to her recent, highly subversive trilogy of Maestra novels, dealing with the Ripley-esque exploits of their protagonist Judith Rashleigh. Yet, unfortunately, British critics and interviewers have repeatedly attempted to link Hilton herself with many of the femmes fatales that she writes about so elegantly and wittily. Perhaps as a riposte to their narrow-mindedness, her latest book, a short, elegant monograph called Sex and the City of Ladies, deals with the way in which history has largely been told from a male perspective, and attempts to redress the balance by bringing to life three notorious women from history: Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great. Hilton has often bemoaned the way in which interviewers have attempted to discuss her private life rather than her work, but here at The Chap we have no such prurient impulses.
“I was mystified by the raised eyebrows. Maestra was described as a ‘shocking’ book, but compared with some of the historical goings-on I had already written about, it felt positively tame. Maestra was realistic, as far as I was concerned; I wondered whether the pearl-clutchers actually know what’s going on online” We instead sat down with The Talented Ms Hilton to discuss questions of identity, being misunderstood and objectified and the sartorial faux pas that still keeps her awake at night.
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