The huge cast of characters in our current read, The Kingdom of the Wicked, includes Agrippina, niece and wife of Claudius and mother of Nero. Mary Beard's latest blog post muses about writing programme notes for a new production of Handel's opera, Agrippina, and has a nice illustration of a coin with an image of Agrippina. Mary Beard also refers us to the wikipedia page on Agrippina, which has a picture of Ava Gardner as Agrippina in the mini-series A.D. Anthony Burgess says in the Author's Note to The Kingdom of the Wicked:
Thus, The Kingdom of the Wicked, which was partly written for its own sake, partly in anticipation of A.D., may be regarded both as an expansion of the latter and a literary diversion in its own right.
Anthony Burgess of course follows the lurid stories in the ancient sources, but Memorabilia Antonina has a nicely illustrated blog post which gives extensive quotes from the sources and attempts to show that the lady has been much maligned.
