Books: Cleopatra and Anthony

Preston novel reexamines the lives of the world’s two most famous lovers and asks where would we be today if they’d succeeded in winning the Roman Empire *** 3 Stars

By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 9/1/2010 - “I’m interested in people who despite an overwhelming obstacles achieve extraordinary things and also in people to whom history has been unfair,” says Cleopatra and Anthony author Diana Preston. “Cleopatra had a traumatic childhood and adolescence. One of her sisters was executed by her father, probably in front of her. As a young queen her half-brother ejected her from her throne and forced her to flee. She got back her throne by seducing Julius Caesar and kept it for the rest of her life until her suicide at thirty-nine.”

Know as history’s greatest lovers, Cleopatra and Anthony are more then that. Their lives had lots of political intrigue both in Egypt and Rome. Preston explains how Cleopatra was more political and Antony not a crazy war monger.

“She was the most powerful female ruler of the ancient world with a vision of a new world order,” says Preston. “If she and her Roman lover Mark Antony had succeeded in introducing that new order our own world might have been very different. I wanted to capture the importance of their story as well as its drama.”

“Also the picture of Cleopatra that has descended through history thanks to Roman propaganda, is not of a powerful, politically-astute, independent-minded woman but of some sort of sexy siren,” says Preston. “I wanted to set the record straight.”

“I spent a long time in Egypt, especially in Alexandria, Cleopatras’ capital,” says Preston. “It was intriguing to examine artifacts like stone sphinxes retrieved from beneath the harbor where marine archaeologists believe they have located the remains of her palace.”

“But one of the strangest experiences was driving in an armed convoy through sesame fields in Egypt to the temple at Dendera down the Nile near Luxor where one of the very few surviving images of Cleopatra is carved on the temple’s back wall,” says Preston. “Climbing the worn stone stairs up the darkened staircase inside the temple, lined with life-size freezes of Egyptian priests, gave me goosebumps. I could imagine Cleopatra taking the same walk.”

You get to learn more of who Cleopatra and Anthony were as people and how they became the people they did. Cleopatra greatest motivator was political. She knew she needed a man to help her win and the political ramifications behind her choices. Antony was loyal and viewed Cleopatra as an equal that they could rule the Roman Empire.

Preston worked with English academic Dr. Martin Weaver, an expert in archaeological facial reconstruction, to create a model showing how Cleopatra may have looked. “Martin brought Cleopatra’s finished head round to my house in the trunk of his car. We got some pretty funny looks as he carried it inside. Our model doesn’t look a bit like Liz Taylor. It’s imperious and characterful rather than drop-dead gorgeous. Martin keeps her on his windowsill and says he can feel her watching him.”

Preston read all the classical texts from the period and its aftermath that she could find, such as Cicero and Plutarch. She visited as many of the places associated with the story as possible, cruising down the Nile as Cleopatra did with Caesar, retracing the route of Antony’s army as it marched through Armenia on his Pathian campaign and exploring Alexandria. She read about Egyptian and Roman religion, culture and social life to try and understand the two societies and their very different outlooks.

Preston’s U.S. agent is Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management. Preston’s agent in the UK is Bill Hamilton of A.M. Heath. Preston was  introduced to A.M. Heath at the start of her career by another writer.

“For the last 10 years I’ve had a highly enjoyable and rewarding relationship with Diana, debating ideas for her books that would suit the market and the tastes of her publishers, striking deals, and tracking them through the writing up to publication,” says agent Bill Hamilton. “It’s been an unusually productive collaboration, partly because we found from the start that we think along similar lines, and because of her infectious enthusiasm for the subjects she writes about.”

Preston’s U.S. editor is George Gibson of Walker Books and Bloomsbury. “George is a gifted editor with whom I’ve worked for a long time,” says Preston. “He has an infallible eye for spotting where I’ve glossed something over or dismissed something too lightly. Satisfying his rigorous questions can be a challenge but is always worthwhile.”

“George has been my editor since around 2000 after he saw a review of one of my books in the Times Literary Supplement,” says Preston. “I’m London based and George is in New York but we’re able to meet up sometimes when I’m in the US on a book tour or on holiday or when George comes over for the London Book Fair. We know each other well and  the editorial process works pretty smoothly. George reads the text, makes detailed comments - and asks those challenging questions. We discuss these and it becomes an iterative process until we both have something we feel happy with.”

Preston provides a more realistic portrait of Cleopatra and Anthony. The facts that Preston reveals have been heard before, yet she finds other compelling reasons why they did what they did. The descriptions of Roman and Egyptian life and politics are fascinating. Lovers of history will relish her portrait of life in Rome and Egypt.

Preston raises the question of what if? What if Cleopatra and Anthony had won? How would that have changed history?

Preston was born in London and still lives there. Preston won the L.A. Times Book Prize for Before the Fall Out: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima. She’s currently working on a quintet of historical novels about the Moghuls of India with her husband under the pseudonym Alex Rutherford. The first book, about the founder of the Moghul dynasty, was recently released in the U.S. It’s called Raiders from the North.

Preston has a Cleopatra page on Facebook.

Cleopatra and Antony: Power, Love, and Politics in the Ancient World by Diana Preson

Paperback, 352 pages, Publisher: Walker & Company; 1 edition (March 30, 2010), Language: English, ISBN: 9780802710598  $16.00