This book turns aside from the official portraits and the great historical events to rediscover the private places and objects that reflect Marie Antoinette's personality and reveal her more directly to our modern gaze. In retreat from the stifling protocol of the French court and in pursuit of her own tastes (influenced by her free and happy childhood in the Austrian court), Marie Antoinette created her own personal domain - and cultivated a new royal 'style'.

At Rambouillet, Versailles and Fontainebleau, her apartments, her pavilions, cottages and dairies set in 'rustic' landscapes, were exquisitely designed and furnished by the most gifted artists and craftsmen, among them the cabinet-makers Riesener and Sene, and the architect Mique.

Beautifully photographed by Francois Halard, these rooms and buildings are shown here in fascinating detail. From the distinctive fabrics and furnishings to the queen's favourite objects - an amber curiosity, a Chinese lacquer gift from her mother, a porcelain bowl - Marie-France Boyer's practised eye perceives the essence of the queen's taste and its appeal to modern sensibilities.

This is an opportunity to decide whether the queen was the arbiter, the creator even, of a style, or merely the most exalted expression of the eighteenth-century French art of living.