Amanda Foreman - Historian

29th May 2007- 12th November 2025 Our beloved Xanthe passed away peacefully at 8:10pm at NYU Langone Children’s Hospital. For three weeks, we walked with Xanthe through the valley of the shadow of death, fearing no evil, and comforting her still. As per her wishes, Xanthe’s organs were donated to give others the chance to live their lives fully.

Xanthe’s generosity continues to ripple outward in extraordinary ways. Our family is deeply grateful for the work LiveOnNY does and for honoring her memory. Xanthe found joy in music, poetry, and ‘morotia’, her word for living purple, and through LiveOnNY, her spirit continues to live on in meaningful ways. Now, whenever we see a morotia sunset or hear a Noah Kahan song, we are reminded not only of her warmth and beauty, but also of the lasting impact of her generosity.

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St Luke’s church has very kindly supplied a livestream link for anyone who would like to join Xanthe’s Service next Tuesday virtually. /live/nmYEKlXJXy8?feature=share.

A funeral for a child lies on the edge of paradox. Everything about it is wrong in the way an adult suit looks wrong on an immature body. The words and rituals are too long for a life so short and too inadequate for a tragedy so great. Sixty minutes on a Wednesday afternoon to make up for all that would have been, could have been, or might have been the memory milestones awaiting Xanthe in the future. Thank goodness for Charles Dickens, the king of paradoxes. Looking back, I can say, honestly, of Xanthe’s funeral on 10th December that, ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ The church was filled with love and grief in equal measure. There were moments when I felt, ‘it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.’ I am grateful to every person who joined us in person and online to say farewell to Xanthe. It is never easy to drop everything, particularly for a funeral, and especially one in a different city, or state, or even country. I am especially grateful, however, for the presence of so many of those who had treated Xanthe. I only discovered that the Newark Airport First Responders and flight crew of UA 15 were in the church when I stood up to deliver my appreciation and caught sight of their dress uniforms. They introduced themselves after the funeral. I couldn’t help asking them about what happened that night. I needed to know even if their answers forever destroyed my peace of mind: Was Xanthe frightened? Was she in tears when she came to? Did people step over her as she lay on floor of the jetway? It was nothing like that, they assured me. Xanthe was calm, apologetic even; and she was never left alone. Not for a minute. One of the flight crew had his arms around Xanthe as her heart stopped and she lost consciousness. But mine can beat a little less harshly now because I know my child’s last memory was the touch of human comfort. [continued on Facebook /amanda.foreman.186]

This morning, Reg asked me, ‘What do you say when people ask, “How are you?”’ It’s such a kindly meant question, and I am sorry it feels impossible to answer. Or, at least, impossible to answer honestly, coherently, and in as few sentences as possible. Still, we have gone through something profoundly tragic and human — so human that hundreds of our friends, colleagues, and relatives willingly accompanied us as much as they could, which makes me want to try to offer an answer. I promise to be honest, I’m not sure about coherence, and I hope you will forgive my failure at brevity. With Xanthe’s death, we have quite literally reached ‘the end’. Only it isn’t. I love writers who understand the craving to know, “And then, what happened after?” Jane Austen was kind enough to inform her readers that Elizabeth and Jane Bennet were extremely happy, Mary was less annoying, Kitty much improved, and Lydia stayed the same if not worse. Badgered by his audience, George Bernard Shaw revealed that Eliza Doolittle, in fact, rejected Professor Higgins and opened a flower shop with Freddie. After the destruction of the ring in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien followed the hobbits all the way back to the Shire. He loitered there for another hundred pages before finally sending Frodo Baggins off to the Grey Havens along with Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel. Tolkien had even more to say about the fate of his hairy-footed friends, but his publisher balked at adding an epilogue to the epilogue. The spy novelist John le Carré solved his dilemma about the denouement in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by bringing the unassuming hero George Smiley out of retirement two books later, in Smiley’s People, just so he could tie up all the loose ends. Continued on: /

There is one phone call that every parent dreads to receive. It is depicted ad nauseam in books and films precisely because of its horrendous power over our fears. On October 24th, we received a call from Beth Israel Hospital in Newark that our 18 year-old daughter Xanthe Barton was in the ER. She had suffered a pulmonary embolism during her flight from London and was in critical condition. We have not left the hospital since. Xanthe is in the ICU on life support. The whole family is with her. It is too early to do anything other than take it one day at a time, but I can say with absolute certainty that she is surrounded by love and is receiving the best possible care from the ICU team. �I have posted the news here because at such moments as these it becomes extremely difficult to share information individually, or contact everyone who would like to join the community of support, or simply stay abreast of news. We have created a page for Xanthe at CaringBridge, an organization started for families for this very reason: /site/a51218c6-b2a1-11f0-a835-4d07d9afcf6f?utm_source=website_share&utm_medium=share_button&utm_term=&utm_content=link_share_button&utm_campaign=private_home_page Thank you. Amanda Foreman and Jonathan Barton. Xanthe’s CaringBridge

Yesterday marked a turning point: Sanae Takaichi has been elected as Japan’s first female Prime Minister. In a country where the imperial line and political elite have long been overwhelmingly male, this moment demands reflection: How do firsts such as this reshape our narratives of leadership, tradition and gender in a modern democracy? And how much does breaking the glass ceiling signal substantive change versus symbolic gesture? From the Meiji era’s reforms to post-war economic expansion, Japan’s political evolution has rested on stability and continuity. Takaichi’s rise invites us to ask: in societies anchored by legacy and hierarchy, what does a woman at the helm actually signify? The first woman to occupy a prime-ministerial office in Japan is not merely a headline — she represents a historical pivot where gender, power and national identity meet. #WomenLeaders #GenderHistory #JapanPolitics

Mary Wollstonecraft once wrote, “I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.” Her daughter, Mary Shelley, would later create Frankenstein, reshaping modern literature. Their lives remind us that intellectual inheritance can be more radical than political revolution — and that the pen, in the right hands, is history’s most enduring rebellion. #WomenInHistory #MaryWollstonecraft #MaryShelley

Early American history contains surprising turns: long before the 19th Amendment, New Jersey women—thanks to a legal loophole—could cast ballots as early as 1776, with “he or she” written into the state’s election law by 1790. This striking expansion meant property-owning women (mostly single or widowed, since married women couldn’t own property) could participate in the political process decades ahead of their peers across America. But in 1807, political realities intervened, and the law was rewritten to restrict voting to white men, snuffing out this radical experiment and igniting a much longer fight for women's suffrage that wouldn’t be resolved until 1920.​ New Jersey’s story reminds us: the right to vote has never been straightforward or inevitable, but instead the product of ongoing contest, exclusion, and extraordinary resilience—a prelude to struggles that echo into our own day. #WomensHistory #Suffrage #HiddenHistory IMAGE: Howard Pyle’s 1880 illustration for Harper’s Weekly is entitled “Women at the polls in New Jersey in the Good Old Times.” The scene recalls the period from 1797 to 1807 when New Jersey women were permitted to vote. ALAMY/CORDON PRESS