Maria Theresa Empress:

Author Richard Bassett will present his engrossing biography of Empress Maria Theresa.
Tracing the life and complex legacy of the single most powerful woman in eighteenth-century Europe and one of the world’s most influential leaders.

At the age of just twenty-three she succeeded to the Habsburg domains only to find them contested by almost every power in Europe. Over the next forty years, she became a fierce leader and opponent, as well as a devoted wife and mother to sixteen children.

Drawing on hitherto unpublished sources, Bassett reveals her keen sense of moderation and tolerance, innovative ideas on free trade and finance, and studied reluctance to resort to policies of territorial expansion. Yet Maria Theresa’s modernization policies were not entirely progressive. Antisemitism and an enduring suspicion of Protestantism greatly affected the lives of her subjects.

Richard Bassett has worked in the City for the last fifteen years advising several of Europe’s largest companies. Previously he worked in Central Europe for many years, first as a professional horn player at the National Slovene Opera House in Ljubljana and then as a staff correspondent of the London Times in Vienna, Rome and Warsaw, where his dispatches covered the end of the Cold War and gave early warnings of the impending disintegration of Yugoslavia. He divides his time between London and the Continent.
Previous books – From Trieste to Prague and Vienna to Warsaw
Playing for Time: Guido Schmidt and the Struggle for Austria