The Memoirs of Madame Tussaud
Biographies & Memoirs
THE MEMOIRS OF MADAME TUSSAUD. The name of Madame Tussaud is famous throughout the world, yet few people know the fascinating story of her life in Paris during the French revolution, where she met Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon, became a close friend of the Royal family and an acquaintance of the radical Robespierre. In her ’Memoirs’ of 1838, Madame Tussaud recounts how she was forced to take wax impressions of the newly severed heads of her Royal Friends to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and how , with her head shaved, she awaited her own execution with the beautiful Josephine Beauharnais, future Empress Of France. Fortunate to survive, she travelled to England with her collection of macabre wax casts and established the Baker Street Bazaar’ so creating the Waxworks museum that has made her name immortal. In this production Madame Tussaud is played by Jane Lapotaire.