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All Quotes by author - Amanda Foreman
" Almost the first thing Obama did in the White House was to return the bust of Winston Churchill to the British embassy. That suggests a major re-ordering of things. It'll be fascinating to see what happens from now on. It was a genuine break with the recent past - perhaps to re-connect with the past past. "
Genuine
Past
Now
" As a working mother, wife, daughter, and daughter-in-law, I have to make constant moral choices. Every choice I make results in someone else suffering. "
Wife
Moral
Mother
" A small foot in China, no different from a tiny waist in Victorian England, represented the height of female refinement. For families with marriageable daughters, foot size translated into its own form of currency and a means of achieving upward mobility. The most desirable bride possessed a three-inch foot, known as a 'golden lotus.' "
Own
Achieving
Bride
" Contrary to popular belief, Henry VIII did not divorce any of his wives. He had sought an annulment from Catherine of Aragon - which he finally awarded to himself after the pope's continued refusal. When it came to Anne's turn, Henry took the easy route by having her found guilty of treason. "
Divorce
Belief
Turn
" Foot-binding is said to have been inspired by a tenth-century court dancer named Yao Niang who bound her feet into the shape of a new moon. She entranced Emperor Li Yu by dancing on her toes inside a six-foot golden lotus festooned with ribbons and precious stones. "
Moon
Feet
Dancing
" Foot-binding, which started out as a fashionable impulse, became an expression of Han identity after the Mongols invaded China in 1279. The fact that it was only performed by Chinese women turned the practice into a kind of shorthand for ethnic pride. "
Women
Kind
Identity
" For a country that makes such a fuss about love on the 14th of February, America has a funny way of showing it on the other 364 days of the year. "
Country
America
Funny
" For America, 1812 became the war in which it had finally gained its independence. For Britain, 1812 became the skirmish it had contained, while winning the real war against its greatest nemesis, Napoleon. "
War
Independence
Had
" For America, Britain has never been more than a strategic player, and when it suits them to use us, then there's been a rapprochement. But if it doesn't suit them, you're kicked out the door. In 1860, America was like a big, spoilt teenager trying to get away from its parent. "
You
America
Door
" For centuries, divorce in the West was a male tool of control - a legislative chastity belt designed to ensure that a wife had one master, while a husband could enjoy many mistresses. It is as though, having denied women their cake for so long, the makers have no wish to see them enjoy it. "
Divorce
Women
Wife
" For people like me, who have got their flags and wars mixed up, I think it should be pointed out that there may have been only one War of 1812, but there are four distinct versions of it - the American, the British, the Canadian, and the Native American. "
Think
Me
People
" For women, Neo-Confucianism placed extra emphasis on chastity, obedience, and diligence. A good wife should have no desire other than to serve her husband, no ambition other than to produce a son, and no interest beyond subjugating herself to her husband's family - meaning, among other things, she must never remarry if widowed. "
Son
Women
Wife
" I go into the local chemist, and I can hear people saying, 'Oh my Gaaahd - it's Lisa Kudrow!' And there's a famous Amanda Foreman, an actress two years older than me, who appears in 'Private Practice'. "
Me
People
Go
" In 1861, Bachofen published his radical thesis that the Amazons were not a myth but a fact. In his view, humanity started out under the rule of womankind and only switched to patriarchy at the dawn of civilization. "
Dawn
Fact
Humanity
" In 1874, Mary Fraser accompanied her husband Hugh to Hong Kong, arriving hours after a typhoon had wrecked the island. Some 10,000 boat families had drowned in the harbour. There was no way to avoid the bloated bodies, and when Mary disembarked, she felt her foot land on something soft. "
She
Boat
Husband
" I want my children to see what all my work leads to. "
Want
Leads
Children
" I was there for the making of Young Winston, but guns kept going off. I went 'Waaaaah,' and someone said, 'Please get the child off the set.' "
Said
Young
Guns
" Over the years, the writers at DC Comics softened Wonder Woman's powers in ways that would have infuriated Marston. During the 1960s, she was hardly wondrous at all, less a heroic warrior than the tomboyish girl next door. It was no longer clear whether she was meant to empower the girls or captivate the boys. "
Wonder
Warrior
Woman
" 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. "
Politics
Your
Duty
" The creators of Wonder Woman had no interest in proving an actual link to the past. In some parts of the academic world, however, the historical existence of the Amazons, or any matriarchal society, has long been a raging issue. "
Past
Long
World
" The long years of fighting Napoleon's ambitions for a world empire had hardened the British into an 'us-against-them' mentality. "
Fighting
Empire
Long
" The narrative of 'man the hunter' presupposes that men provided the nutrition, invented the tools, and established social organization and communication through the hunt, and that women were just sitting by the fire waiting for evolution to drag them out by the hair in the 1960s in order to participate. "
Women
Waiting
Men
" We need to feminise history because we are 50 per cent of the population, and our story is just as interesting. "
Interesting
History
Story
" What if everything you were told about the female was wrong? "
Everything
What If
Wrong
" When I read the news that Wonder Woman was going to be resurrected for a blockbuster movie in 2016, 'Batman vs. Superman', it made me excited - and anxious. Would the producers give her a role as fierce as her origins - and maybe some shoulder straps - or would she just be cartoon eye candy? "
Fierce
Me
Wonder
" When Napoleon abdicated in April 1814, Britain expected that America would soon lose heart and surrender, too. From then on, London's chief aims were to bring a swift conclusion to the war and capture as much territory as possible in order to gain the best advantage in the inevitable peace talks. "
Heart
America
Peace
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