Boadicea’s Chariot. Antonia Fraser. 1988.

Boadicea is a living legend. Everyone knows her story: the stark tale of her stand against the Romans thrills and horrifies each generation. The fabulous Queen, the heroine aloft, sends a special frisson through the ages as the shimmering phenomenon of a powerful woman. "The hand that once rocked the cradle now drives the chariot and shakes the spear.

In her dazzlingly erudite and wide-ranging book, Antonia Fraser moves on from examining the facts about Boadicea to her 'chariot, the symbol of the journey through history of an infinite variety of Warrior Queens, found in almost every culture. On the one hand she recounts the stories of such diverse national heroines as Zenobia of Palmyra, Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I, Queen Jinga of Angola, Catherine the Great and the Rani of Jhansi, right up to the twentieth-century democratically elected Warrior Queens' - Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and that formidable exponent of the role in our own day, Margaret Thatcher. On the other hand she examines, in terms of their history, the themes which occur and re-occur in very different civilizations and circumstances: the Tomboy Syndrome, for example, by which the adult Warrior Queen is often granted a mythical 'tomboy' past, or the Shame Syndrome, by which the courage of the Warrior Queen is contrasted with the weakness of the males around her.

Sexuality is also a constant theme, as the Warrior Queen is sometimes seen as preternaturally chaste, sometimes as unnaturally voracious - the same female leader on occasion being the subject of both accusations.