... 349 11572 9 pb

Louis XIV **** Anthony Levi Constable, 2004 310pp, 25 [pounds sterling] ISBN 1 84119425 5

At the 1961 Tory Conference the MP for Darlington received the following instruction from the Foreign Secretary whom he found spewing in the gents': 'Tell Harold I've been poisoned and that he's got to make my speech.' If Lisa Hilton and Anne Somerset are to be believed, Lord Home's selfdiagnosis would have been taken literally at the court of Louis XIV. Somerset's horrific detective story, analysing the most notorious scandal of the seventeenth century, shows how satanists, child-murderers and, above all, poisoners were seen everywhere. Hilton's subject in this her first book is Louis XIV's maitresse en titre Athenais Marquise de Montespan who was the most exalted suspect in the Affair, accused of administering not only love potions but poison to the king and of participating in witchcraft, black masses and infanticide. These two authors more or less agree as to her guilt.

Anne Somerset marshals the confusing and contradictory evidence in order to establish what really happened....

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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