the people had been released but i think she was shocked and put her own suffering into perspective and started the healing process so that she was able to pick her life up after that and of course she did leader meet another man and had lived long happy marriage with him. >> host: first of all your first book is completely unrelated to the women in the war. is there any connection between charleston and blueberry house and garden and your leader books on women in the war? >> guest: without was the book that started me as a writer and was done in collaboration with my father -- >> host: who is -- >> guest: whose name was quentin. he knew he was dying and he asked me to help him which i think was a way of saying can i pick up the bulk when he could

no longer do so and that is what i did once the funeral was decently over. i had a phone call from the publisher saying we need this in three months' time to you think you can possibly get on with that. i had no intention at that point of being a writer. of course my own interests that were underlining it were the stories of this fascinating house. now, charleston is the home of two british artists, a war it was the home of two british artists. my grandmother and her lifelong companion and it is a museum, it is a beautiful and extraordinary and very, very special place hidden in the south very near where i now live and it is a farmhouse that every inch is decorated the and vanessa as

some of you know was the sister of virginia woolf who was my great aunt, so all that group, the bloomsbury group coming years to visit charleston, virginia, the novelist, the musician and these kind of people had a chance over 30 or 40 years and at the same time the house is decorated as i said. it is covered almost from head to foot in endeavour's the shares, the curtains, the lamps, the floor, the rug, the paintings on walls it is a plethora so that is what the book was about and it has very beautiful photographs by pierrick and photographer -- by

an american photographer. now my father had written his memories of my perceptions were different. i had known it as a child when my grandmother was alive, and i wanted to know from my adult perspective how the heck did my grand mother cope with this house, what did she do about the children, what did she do about getting meals on the table and when all these people came to stay what did she feed them on a? that was stuff my father was not interested in and maybe it is typical female but that is the missing link. those are the questions i always ask. those are the questions that the readers want to ask and certainly the questions visitors to charleston ask. it's a museum open to the public from april to october every year i thoroughly recommend it and the book. >> host: virginia nicholson come here in the series in

london we also talk with rimini lee. what do you think of her biography? >> guest: she is spectacular. i think that she has done something completely marvelous with that book. my father wrote the first biography of virginia woolf and road that before she took a long, but his aim had always been to do a personal memoir, and to tell the life. he didn't regard himself as a literary critic and he always vetoed that area. these four books she wrote but he didn't explore them or look for the links between her writing and life, and that is what hermini did. she gave the fall and rounded picture of the writer's life and

i applaud that. >> host: if the viewers are interested in contacting you what is the best address? is there a website? >> guest: i have my own web site. it is virginianichollson.ck. i do not have a direct link but all of my agents details are on it. i have a u.s. agent and an english agent so that is the best way. alternatively, anyone that wants to write to charleston can go on to charleston.org.uk and any communications addressed to me will be put through. >> host: are you working on another book particularly when it comes to women, war or a topic related? >> guest: i've left behind. i am marching steadily of the century. the current book is about women in the 1950's.

and i have taken that decade of literally 1950 to 1960. it's fascinating. it's difficult. it doesn't have the strong historical momentum of the previous decades. but the interesting thing is that we always assume that a lot of things were first in the 1960's and in fact the reality that i'm discovering is a lot of the things we think happened had already happened in the 50's but was also a decade of great extremes when you could look on the one hand to the mass of membership of the young conservative movement and on the other extreme the invention of the teenager and rock-and-roll. there's another extreme of the women's institute which for your american viewers we tend to add it's a kind of women who get

together to make jam and jelly and sing hymns. the image is very cozy. and again the other extreme is the campaign for nuclear disarmament, the 1950's was the height of the cold war, the height of communism, the mccarthy era. i've been interviewing all sorts of women and i was talking to a woman the other day that joined the communist party when she was at cambridge university in 1951. i've talked to women who joined the nuclear disarmament campaign and have worked in factories. i've talked to women who were immigrants who came over from jamaica because of course of is the first wave of immigration into this country. and black people who came over here were subject to the most horrendous discrimination.

i talked to a lady living in south london who told me how she was turned away looking for somewhere to live. it is a fascinating era full of contradictions but quite extraordinary and a lot of people still alive but remember it's. our mothers, our aunts. so i am hoping i will get a lot of readers. >> host: virginia nicholson, we appreciate you very much. >> guest: thank you. >> now from london book tv interviewed antonio frazier about the crisis in 1832 and the playwright harold pinter. the author of more than a dozen books and putting the six wives of henry viii and must you go my

life with harold pinter. this is about 25 minutes. >> host: book tv on the c-span2 series from london continues and we want to introduce you to the author antonia fraser and perilous question of reforming the revolution brought him if he would start by giving us a snapshot of what england was like in the 1830's, each team 20s leading up to 1842. >> guest: it was a crossroads at that time of england was just recovering from the victory of 1814 bling on the great rain of victoria shortly before so it is a crossroads in more than one sense. you have the industrial revolution which is taking place

and the arrival of the railroads olivines are transforming ways people would never have expected communications being transformed the end of the second time in this country you get great economic equality and a lot of unemployment falling the end of the napoleonic war in 1815 so back with no jobs, people roaming about and economic and employment comes to stress on the one hand and a protest, physical pingree protest on the other so it is a simmering country. then you get the new king, william for who succeeds the famous or the notorious regions of everything is up for change. at the same time, this country in terms of the parliament, this is extraordinary that people just do not believe it. the following great cities to

mention a few they don't have very few. they have no mps at all. people in these great cities that work hard and create wealth have no votes. why? because it has grown up since the middle ages. there are many good things to be said about the constitution and there are some bad things that can just go too slowly. and it hadn't been the distribution of seats hadn't been offered since 1760 at all so you get these extraordinary disparities. in the meantime, birmingham and the green mountain near the source has the two m ps. it's unbelievable. people can't come and look at the miraculous mound that is the

best example. >> host: what was the power of king william at that time and the power of the parliament? >> guest: he was a constitutional law -- mark. the power of the markey has been limited quite carefully by custom if it goes too far there will be rapid reaction. there are struggles with his father in the previous century who had a long range from 1760 to 1820 come struggles with george iii from the american revolution from some of his people. but the powers are he has the power to create the houses of parliament. he's the only person that can create the piers and perhaps he

would take advice that is one. he can agree or disagree to the measure in the parliament. he has got to be very careful. it is an extraordinary dance and the character is enormously important and delicate moment. >> host: lady antonia of was the perilous question of 1832? >> guest: the question and everybody used the phrase this was a question of parliamentary reform and the king used the phrase the new prime minister used the phrase and was in the perilous because like quote the great british historian who says we must always remember what lies in the past once lead in the future and of course they didn't know the reform bill would be passed.

if it was passed in the revolution you get these opposing views but it's a very tense. it wasn't anything like universal suffrage and the universal male suffrage. we aren't talking about the votes for women that lies in effect on hundred years ahead but there is no idea of the universal male suffrage there is an idea to represent the country more fairly to do something as the great cities and great barons of commerce all of whom are contributing to the countries of the idea was to

give people a certain amount of property when they argued about the details to give them votes and not restrict the votes to people that have the votes and not to have rotten barriers and pocket the barriers where they just nominate and say what you like to be bmp at what cost a thousand pounds. was a rotten system, it was and grown, it was grown up to be rotten. >> host: was this a space reform? >> guest: the word democracy was absolute horror at the time. the great historian of the reform writing in 1912 said that the word democracy was like the word socialism in 1912. it was a terrible thing and everybody was coming and i

compared it to the word communism in the mccarthy america. it is a word all of us talk about democracy now. but then people said whatever we do we do not want democracy. >> host: what did they want? >> guest: they wanted reform and a stable country where people who had a stake in the country, which is related to property had votes in parliament as i say, it is and we that have grown up in the age of universal male and female suffrage, it wasn't that, but to get a stable reform you have to proceed from stage to stage unless you have a violent revolution and in a violent resolution as with many at the time just running france in 1813 there is a great deal of suffering and you don't always secure the results you want.

>> host: was there a free press in britain at that time and what was the role of the king and promoting for not promoting the perilous questioned? >> guest: taking the free press they were very expensive by our standards. we are living in an age newspapers were vanishing over the horizon but if you think of the great age of newspapers, their expensive. they were also penni sheets. they had to pay a stamp duty which made it expensive but they were powerful with the arrival of the railroads and of the system they could go up around the country and many people would read one copies of a were very important. something like the times, which was a strong supporter of reform and was very powerful. this is the age of the guardian another supporter, very powerful. but there was another side to all of this of course but newspapers you get cartoons and

the character and there were great cartoonists and satire isn't always welcome to the people that are saturn so the picture of not only the king about his wife, that didn't have a very good effect on the cause because he became outraged by the attacks and she was known as addle head. the attacks today haven't gotten stronger. >> host: how long was king william's the king? >> guest: he succeeded in july of 1830 and died in 1837 when he was succeeded by his young girl niece victoria. so it was a special short ring but during it, this extraordinary development in

history took place. >> host: what about the middle class in britain at the point? >> guest: there is a middle class rising and it doesn't have many votes and that is part of the problem that it's articulate , well-educated and high-minded, philanthropic and there's a connection to the dissent unitarians. the power of the middle class lays on them saying we believe in peaceful reform. we believe in peaceful change but if you don't listen to us, there are people below less as they would say that believe in something very different which was violent reform. if queen elizabeth went back to this time, what she recognized the traditions and the power between parliament and the family?

>> guest: i don't think it's changed dramatically and to the compromise made. william for as you will see in my book in the and he does a sort of compromise and sticks up for the reformers. the queen i think is more publicly constitutional during her long and wonderful rain. there's never really been complaints that she gave undue political support to one side or another. of that in itself is a remarkable achievement. >> host: if william haven't supported the reform of what had happened? >> guest: this is one of the questions with the revolution have come if he had said because the house of lords will not agree to the reform this was the

question i will allow them to have their way and not give seats to all these people. if he had supported them i think that probably would have been a revolution or violent uprising because the people were all their uprising already. can you imagine in bristol the speaker of the house of commons has to skate the grooves of the houses and so that is what i think what has happened. that is why i think it is a delicate dance. the prime minister said in all of my political life which was very long i didn't know a moment i feared revolution except 1832. >> host: lady antonia fraser is a historian and novelist and is coming out of this year

perilous question reform revolution britain on the brink in 1832. in your book 1832, one of the families you talk about is the spencer family. is that a family that is related to people currently? >> guest: that is the wonderful thing you find these names in british history. one of their great heroes of reform was the heir to rural spencer, and it is of course the late princess diana was descended and was the daughter at the time. here we find them in a very noble cause of reform in 1832 and i hope i shall send a copy to prince william i don't know if he will read it but i think that he can be deprived of his ancestors. >> host: what about the terms

liberal, wade, were those used in this time and developed? >> guest: tory and whig are the terms we used. it's hard to identify them. tori is roughly conservative, that is a name that is just coming into use but we still use it. they have really split into liberals. the word liberal wasn't very popular. there wasn't a thing called the liberal party until later, so it is really toris and whigs. >> host: but for those terms used back in the 1830's? >> guest: tori and whig the parties were much less organized. it was much less party

organization. it was still sort of coming towards that. the votes were always held in public. it's no secret ballot. and it wasn't until people had to be registered as a result of the bill in 1832 that you get more formal party organization. so you get the to lose bodies. >> host: was the conversation about the perilous question a national conversation being held nationally? >> guest: it was, but it was held in parliament because there were the bonds that were shouting let's have reform. i think they wanted to read more than reform and then there were the people live we may distinguish between the two. going back to the distress of the people who were talking about reform and thinking this is the way that we must go and

this is the way that we should go and we are going to educate until we get. >> host: what did the question do with regard to the king's power? >> guest: i would say the perilous question showed that whenever they came into conflict with what was the people's will, he had to in the end go with the people. it was a delicate dance. if you hit back to the house of lords against the house of commons, which favored reform, to reform itself, if he had backed the will of these words that hadn't been elected, many with ancient names, and that was the claim to fame i don't think the monarchy would have fallen and that we can never be sure about that, people were frightened by that, but i do think that there would have been

violent uprisings throughout the country. and he might have suffered. >> host: what was the difference between king william's's reena and then queen victoria? >> guest: the reign of queen victoria, very young woman, just 18 so she doesn't have a region, but she is very young and you get a country in which the issue of reform will come back and 1860's seven. it's occupied with bup chart but it's also occupied with other things which she presides the development of the empire in the form it finally was found, the war, what to do about crime, all of those 19th century topics she has to deal with with the aid of her prime minister's. victoria is a very strong character but nevertheless she begins as a young woman, she has a lot of children, a council,

prince albert advises her she is much more perceived as in the need of advice and some of our key develops like all institutions develop or by. >> host: lady antonia fraser has written about james vi, the wives of henry viii. you also write novels. what are those novels? >> guest: the hour crime novels and they're fun to write because i don't have to do research. i love research but every now and then -- i was traveling with my late husband, harold, he was directing a play and i like to write crime novels and it's fun. she is a television interviewer that is her profession that she is also an investigator in private life. >> host: how do you switch between real history and

imagination? >> guest: i think that history is some incredibly in exciting. but at the end of one book i probably need a little changed to scribble away rather than go on the computer. >> host: we have been calling you lady. why are you lady? >> guest: because my late father was of lundford and the builders are called lady and again i will give you -- my late father and of the daughters exactly like lady diana spencer that married prince charles was lady and after she became so prominent it was easier to explain why i was lady.

>> host: you dedicated apparel was question to the memory of harold pinter and frank longsford who were not afraid to ask perilous questions. >> guest: it seemed right. they were very different men that they were both fearless late howard and my father, frank, they were fearless and did a tremendous work about prisons, reform, visiting prisoners and all that. he was a very active man in his own world and harold was extremely active and he spoke out on any situation that he thought demanded it, and that neither of them had been with either of them. one might have wished perhaps but i loved them as they were so it seemed appropriate to join them in the dedication. ..

inspired by their religion spea out. invoking god. a huge cry out which includes women. not considerably on the cover, but actually inside. you can see that, which is important, even though they could not vote, they can raise hope. it is abandoned in 1832 when it seems as if the whole edifice i goto