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1 comments about England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamitlon.

1. The new biography of Emma Hamilton by Kate Williams which was announced as a new important book based on new research etc.
   I was impatient to read it as there is a long time that there was no new biog of Emma.
   It's the worst Emma's biography ever (including the French ones that had the lead before now).
   
   In the prologue you learn that poor Nelson exhausted from his victory at the Nile and suffering from his lost eye and arm (no mention of his wound) fainted in the generous arms of Emma on arriving in Naples. A good start.
   In the 1st chapter Mrs Williams deals with the birth of Amy. To my knowledge all the known facts are the marriage cert of her parents, the baptism cert of Emma and the death cert of his father. From that Mrs Williams can write 10 pages where you learn that Mary Kidd married Henry Lyon because she was unhappy at home, that Emma was certainly conceived before there marriage (a current practice at the time to ensure that the bride to be was fertile) and that the greatest mistery in the life of Emma is the death of his father. Then to your amazement you learn that he either commited suicide (by alcoholic intoxication because at the time all the men working in the coal pit spent all their money in gin of a far potent sort than today and Henry was very unhappy in his marriage) or was discreetly expedited by his unhappy wife who had after that to leave the village quickly as all the widows at the time were believed to be witch.
   You also learn that Fanny Nelson, the wife of Nelson, was sterile because she got syphilis from her first husband.
   All this facts are thrown without any source.
   
   The rest is in the same vein.
   Mrs Williams has written a tabloid novel not an history book.
   This is not the "infamous life of Lady Hamilton" but the "infamous biography".
   
   If like me you collect books on Emma Hamilton, you'll probably have to buy it (or better steal it) for the sake of completion but range it on the back of the shelf with the other fictions with Sontags' "Volcano Lover" and Unswoth's "Losing Nelson" which are good book but clearly labelled as novels.
   
   If you just are interested in reading a biography of Lady Hamilton, buy Flora Fraser's "Beloved Emma" then wait for the book of Mrs Williams to come in paperback and have some fun.

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