I parted company with Maria Theresa on a June day in 1968, and happily have not renwewd the acquaintance, till today.
But today I shall be listening to the In Our Time programme on the Emperess, when "Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Maria Theresa (1717-1780) who inherited the Austrian throne in 1740 at the age of 23.
Her neighbours circled like wolves and, within two months, Frederick the Great had seized one of her most prized lands, Silesia, exploiting her vulnerability.
Yet over the next forty years through political reforms, alliances and marriages, she built Austria up into a formidable power, and she would do whatever it took to save the souls of her Catholic subjects, with a rigidity and intolerance that Joseph II, her son and heir, could not wait to challenge.
With, Catriona Seth, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford, Martyn Rady, Professor of Central European History at University College London, and, Thomas Biskup, Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Hull
Producer: Simon Tillotson"*
Picture; Empress Maria Theresia of Austria, oil on canvas, 1759, Martin van Meytens, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
*Maria Theresa, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nlyv
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