Best-selling author to give lecture on new Civil War book
November 8, 2011
CHARLESTON, SC – November 15, 2011 – Author Amanda Foreman will discuss her new book World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15 in Bond Hall Room 165.
The lecture and book signing as well as question and answer session is sponsored by The Citadel Department of History and the Henry and Jenny Johnson Endowment for Historical Studies. It is free and open to the public.
World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War follows the delicate and often strained relationships between Great Britain, the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War. Many of the characters of the book range from normal British citizens to her highest level diplomats.
Foreman is also the author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, which is a bestseller in England and the United States. The book was nominated for several awards and won the Whitbread Prize for Best Biography in 1999. It has inspired a television documentary, a radio play starting Dame Judi Dench; and a movie, titled The Duchess, staring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes.
Foreman is the daughter of Carl Foreman, the Oscar-winning screen writer of many film classics including The Bridge on the River Kwai, High Noon, and The Guns of Navarone. Born in London, Foreman was raised up in Los Angeles and educated in England. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University in New York. She received her doctorate in Eighteenth-Century British History from Oxford University in 1998.
In addition to regularly writing and reviewing for newspapers and magazines, Foreman has also served on a number of juries including The Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Prize and the National Book Awards.
