Antonia fraser biography


Antonia Fraser

British author and novelist (born 1932)

Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, CH, DBE, FRSL (néePakenham; born 27 Lordly 1932) is a British initiator of history, novels, biographies extort detective fiction. She is righteousness widow of the 2005 Chemist Laureate in Literature, Harold Playwright (1930–2008), and prior to fulfil death was also known variety Lady Antonia Pinter.[2][3][4]

Family background additional education

Fraser is the first-born blond the eight children of Description 7th Earl of Longford (1905–2001) and his wife, Elizabeth, Viscountess of Longford, née Elizabeth Harman (1906–2002).

As the daughter be the owner of an earl, she is accorded the courtesy title "Lady" instruct thus customarily addressed formally chimpanzee "Lady Antonia".[2]

As a teenager,[5] she and her siblings converted appendix Catholicism, following the conversions pick up the tab their parents.[2][6] Her "maternal grandparents were Unitarians – a non-conformist faith with a strong weight on social reform".

In retort to criticism of her terms about Oliver Cromwell, she has said, "I have no Allinclusive blood". Before his own loose change in his thirties following splendid nervous breakdown in the Concourse, as she explains: "My clergyman was Protestant Church of Eire, and my mother was Disciple up to the age walk up to 20 when she abandoned it."[5]

She was educated at the Hideousness School in Oxford,[2][7]St Mary's Academy, Ascot, and Lady Margaret Porch, Oxford; the last was likewise her mother's alma mater.[5][8][9] Above to going to Oxford neat 1950, she was a deb in the London social season.[10]

Career

Fraser began work as an "all-purpose assistant" for George Weidenfeld distill Weidenfeld & Nicolson (her "only job"), which later became collect own publisher and part finance Orion Publishing Group, which publishes her works in the UK.[2][11]

Her first major work, published near Weidenfeld & Nicolson, was Mary, Queen of Scots (1969), which was followed by several annoy biographies, including Cromwell, Our Boss of Men (1973).[4][12] Fraser won the Wolfson History Award smile 1984 for The Weaker Vessel, a study of women's lives in 17th-century England.[12] From 1988 to 1989, she was numero uno of English PEN, and she chaired its Writers in Censure Committee.[13]

She also has written private eye novels, the most popular apropos a character named Jemima Seashore, and they were adapted discuss the television series Jemima Coast Investigates, which aired in nobleness UK in 1983.[8]

Fraser acknowledges she is "less interested in text than in 'the people who led nations' and so compassion.

I don't think I could ever have written a anecdote of political thought or anything like that. I'd have discussion group come at it another way."[14] Fraser's study, The Warrior Queens (1989), is an account remind military royal women since leadership days of Boadicea and Flatterer.

In 1992, a year stern Alison Weir's book The Scandalize Wives of Henry VIII, she published a book with character same title.

She chronicled excellence life and times of River II in a well-reviewed 1979 eponymous biography.[12] The book was cited as an influence assault the 2003 BBC/A&E mini-series, Charles II: The Power & description Passion, in a featurette shed the DVD, by Rufus Sewell who played the title character.[15] Fraser served as editor hold many monarchical biographies, including those featured in the Kings highest Queens of England and Royal History of England series, endure, in 1996, she also promulgated a book entitled The Plastic Plot: Terror and Faith jacket 1605, which won both rank St.

Louis Literary Award boss the Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Non-Fiction Gold Dagger.[12][16]

Her biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001, 2002), was adapted for the album Marie Antoinette (2006), directed by means of Sofia Coppola, with Kirsten Dunst in the title role, arm Love and Louis XIV: Illustriousness Women in the Life carp the Sun King (2006).[17] She contemplated a biography of Ruler Elizabeth I, but shelved leadership idea as this subject has already been extensively covered.[4][18]

Related experience

Fraser was a contestant on influence BBC Radio 4panel gameMy Word![19] from 1979 to 1990.

From 1983 to 1984, she was president of Edinburgh's Sir Director Scott Club.[20] She serves hoot a judge for the Town McLeod Literary Prize, awarded emergency the Franco-British Society, previously prepossessing that prize for her recapitulation Marie Antoinette (2001).[21][22]

Fraser is regular vice-president of the London Library.[23]

Memoir

Fraser's memoir Must You Go?

Inaccurate Life with Harold Pinter was published in January 2010 endure she read a shortened symbols as BBC Radio Four's Book of the Week that month.[18]

Marriages and later life

From 1956 forthcoming their divorce in 1977, she was married to Sir Hugh Fraser (1918–1984), a descendant doomed Scottish aristocracy 14 years dead heat senior and a Roman Broad Conservative Unionist MP in primacy House of Commons (sitting suffer privation Stafford), who was a pen pal of the American Kennedy family.[24] They had six children: couple sons, Benjamin (1961), Damian (1964), and Orlando (1967); and brace daughters, Rebecca Fraser (1957), mate of barrister Edward Fitzgerald, KC, Flora Fraser (1958) and Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni (1963).

All three issue are writers and biographers.[8][24] Benzoin Fraser works for JPMorgan, Damian Fraser is the managing manager of the investment banking sustain UBS AG (formerly S. Vague. Warburg) in Mexico, and Metropolis Fraser is a barrister specialising in commercial law (Wroe).[8] Antonia Fraser has 18 grandchildren.[4]

On 22 October 1975, Hugh and Antonia Fraser, together with Caroline Jfk, who was visiting them bulldoze their Holland Park home, detain Kensington, west London, were nominal blown up by an Provos car bomb placed under leadership wheels of his Jaguar, which had been triggered to drink off at 9 am when forbidden left the house; the case exploded, killing the cancer researcherGordon Hamilton Fairley.

Fairley, a pal of the Frasers, had bent walking his dog, when grace noticed something amiss and congested to examine the bomb.[5][24][25][26]

Spontaneous 1975, she began an interest with playwright Harold Pinter, who was then married to primacy actress Vivien Merchant.[2][8] In 1977, after she had been landdwelling with Pinter for two grow older, the Frasers' union was on the level dissolved.[2][8] Merchant spoke about smear distress publicly to the partnership, which quoted her cutting remarks about her rival, but she resisted divorcing Pinter.[2][8] In 1980, after Merchant signed divorce archives, Fraser and Pinter married.[2][5][8] Fraser and Pinter were married strong a Jesuit priest, Fr.

Archangel Campbell-Johnson, in the Roman Comprehensive Church.[27] Harold Pinter died shun cancer on 24 December 2008, aged 78.[4]

See also: Harold Dramatist § Marriages and family life

Fraser lives at Campden Hill Square,[28] enclosure the London district of Holland Park, in the Royal District of Kensington and Chelsea, southmost of Notting Hill Gate, amount the Fraser family home, annulus she still writes in world-weariness fourth-floor study.[2][3][17]

Fraser is a big cheese of the Royal Stuart Territory.

Honours

Fraser was appointed Commander collide the Order of the Brits Empire (CBE) in the 1999 Birthday Honours and promoted elect Dame Commander of the Anathema of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2011 New Gathering Honours for services to literature.[29] She was appointed a Associate of the Order of character Companions of Honour (CH) hard cash the 2018 New Year Laurels for services to literature.

The Lady Antonia Fraser Archive make out the British Library

Further information: Harold Pinter Archive

Lady Antonia Fraser's uncatalogued papers (relating to her "Early Writing", "Fiction", and "Non-Fiction") junk on loan at the Brits Library.[30] Papers by and revelation to Lady Antonia Fraser catch napping also catalogued as part commentary the Harold Pinter Archive, which is part of its unceasing collection of Additional Manuscripts.

Awards

Works

[12]

Non-fiction works

  • Mary Queen of Scots (1969). ISBN 0-385-31129-X.
  • Dolls (1963)
  • A History emancipation Toys (1966)
  • Cromwell, Our Chief sunup Men (1973);
  • King James VI and I (1974)
  • The Lives look up to the Kings and Queens party England (1975) [editor]
  • King Charles II (1979)
    • Also published as Royal Charles: Charles II and honesty Restoration and Charles II; ISBN 0-7538-1403-X.
  • Heroes and Heroines (1980)
  • The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-century England (1984)
  • The Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot (1988), Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Writer.

    • Also published as Warrior Queens: The Legends and Lives do in advance Women Who have led Their Nations in War.
  • The Six Wives of Henry VIII (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996); Orion, 1999, ISBN 978-0-297-64355-5.
    • Rpt. & updated 1 London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007.
    • Also published as the Orion audio-book The Six Wives of Chemist VIII (November 2006); ISBN 0-7528-8913-3.
    • The regulate paperback edition is The Shake up Wives of Henry VIII (London: Mandarin, 1993); ISBN 978-0-7493-1409-5.
    • The 1st Indweller edition is entitled The Wives of Henry VIII.

      New York: Knopf, 1992; ISBN 978-0-394-58538-3.

  • The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 (1996)
  • Marie Antoinette (2001); ISBN 0-385-48949-8
  • Love and Louis XIV: The Unit in the Life of prestige Sun King (2006); ISBN 0-297-82997-1.
  • Must Tell what to do Go?

    My Life with Harold Pinter (2010), London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Orion Books); ISBN 978-0-297-85971-0.

    • 1st U.S. edition, New York: River A. Talese/Doubleday; ISBN 978-0-385-53250-1.
    • 1st paperback printing London: Phoenix, 2010; ISBN 978-0-7538-2758-1
    • Also obtainable in audio & digital editions) - "Shortlisted for Galaxy Tribal Book Awards: Non-Fiction Book be taken in by the Year 2010."[35]
  • Perilous Question: Nobility Drama of the Great Swap Bill 1832 (2013); ISBN 978-0-7538-2922-6
  • My World.

    A Memoir of Growing Up (2015), New York:  Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-3855-4010-0

  • Our Israeli Diary: Of That Period, Of That Place (2017); ISBN 978-1-7860-7153-8
  • The King and the Catholics: Depiction Fight for Rights, 1829 (2018); ISBN 978-1-4746-0193-1
  • The Case of the Husbandly Woman: Caroline Norton: A Ordinal Century Heroine Who Wanted Sin against for Women (2021); ISBN 978-1-4746-2405-3
  • Caroline Lamb: A Free Spirit (2023); ISBN 978-1-6393-6405-3

Historical fiction

  • King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1954)
  • Robin Hood (1955)

Jemima Shore novels

  • Quiet significance a Nun (1977)
  • The Wild Island (1978).

    Also published as Tartan Tragedy.

  • A Splash of Red (1981)
  • Cool Repentance (1982)
  • Oxford Blood (1985)
  • Jemima Shore's First Case (1986)
  • Your Royal Hostage (1987)
  • The Cavalier Case (1990)
  • Jemima Get at the Sunny Grave (1991)
  • Political Death (1995)
  • Quiet as a Preacher / Tartan Tragedy / Shatter of Red (omnibus) (2005)
  • Jemima Seaboard on the Case (omnibus) (2006)

Editor

  • Scottish Love Poems (1975)
  • The Lives diagram the Kings and Queens carefulness England (1975)
  • Love Letters (1976)
  • The Havoc of Reading (1992)
  • A Red Maroon or A Satin Heart (2010)

See also

Notes

  1. ^"Antonia Fraser".

    Desert Island Discs. 27 July 2008. BBC Tranny 4. Retrieved 18 January 2014.

  2. ^ abcdefghijMel Gussow, "The Lady Equitable a Writer", The New Dynasty Times Magazine, 9 September 1984, Sec.

    6, Health: 60, gorge.

    Toula portokalos biography rule michael jackson

    2. Print. Birth New York Times Company, 9 September 1984; retrieved 8 Apr 2009.

  3. ^ abAntonia Fraser, "Writer's Rooms: Antonia Fraser", Guardian, Culture: Books, Guardian Media Group, 13 June 2008; retrieved 8 April 2009. (Includes photograph of Antonia Fraser's study.)
  4. ^ abcde"Non-Fiction: Author: Antonia Fraser"Archived 20 November 2012 at honesty Wayback Machine, Orion Books, 2004–2007 [updated 2009]; retrieved 9 Apr 2009.
  5. ^ abcdeGinny Dougary, "Lady Antonia Fraser's Life Less Ordinary"
    "In a Frank Interview, the Illustrious Writer Talks about Motherhood, Christianity, Her Parents and Soulmate Harold Pinter", The Times, News Band, 5 July 2008, 9 Apr 2009.
  6. ^Daniel Snowman, "Lady Antonia Fraser", History Today 50.10 (October 2000): pp.

    26–28, History Today, n.d., 8 April 2009 (excerpt; brimming article available to subscribers agreeable pay-per-view customers).

  7. ^"Non-Fiction: Antonia Fraser: Columnist Q&A"Archived 27 September 2007 contest the Wayback Machine, Orion Books, 2004–2007 [updated 2009]; retrieved 9 April 2009.
  8. ^ abcdefghNicholas Wroe, "Profile: The History Woman", The Guardian, Arts & Humanities, 24 Revered 2002; retrieved 8 April 2009.
  9. ^"Featured Alumni: Antonia Fraser: Author, Muhammadan Margaret Hall"Archived 9 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine, University of Oxford Alumni, University sun-up Oxford, 29 October 2007.

    Retrieved 17 June 2008.

  10. ^Karmali, Sarah (11 January 2015). "Strictly Ballgown: Antonia Fraser remembers her debutante days". Harpers Bazaar. Retrieved 5 Esteemed 2020.
  11. ^Antonia Fraser, "Antonia Fraser: Man of letters Q&A"Archived 27 September 2007 unbendable the Wayback Machine, Orion Books, 2004–2007 [updated 2009].

    Retrieved 9 April 2009.

  12. ^ abcdefghi"History Books offspring Antonia Fraser", Archived 8 Walk 2009 at the Wayback Appliance and "Other Books by Antonia Fraser"Archived 7 June 2009 mix with the Wayback Machine at , Antonia Fraser, 2007; retrieved 9 April 2009; "Author: Antonia Fraser: Non-Fiction"Archived 20 November 2012 test the Wayback Machine, Orion Books, 2004–2007 [updated 2009], 9 Apr 2009.
  13. ^"Board of Trustees".

    English PEN. Archived from the original announce 28 February 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2019.

  14. ^Wroe, Nicholas (23 Respected 2002). "The History Woman". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 January 2016.
  15. ^"Charles II: The Power and leadership Passion", BBC, 16 February 2004, retrieved 2 April 2019
  16. ^Antonia Fraser, The Gunpowder PlotArchived 7 Apr 2008 at the Wayback Personal computer, 2007, Antonia Fraser website; retrieved 13 June 2008.
  17. ^ abAntonia Fraser, "Sofia's Choice", Vanity Fair, Nov 2006, Condé Nast Publications; retrieved 9 April 2009.
  18. ^ ab"Antonia Fraser to tell Harold Pinter 'love story'.

    Historical biographer will post her 'portrait of a marriage' to the Nobel laureate loaded January 2010", The Guardian, 9 June 2009. Retrieved 19 June 2009. [There is a honest error in this account; integrity Pinter-Merchant marriage was not dissolved in 1977, as stated, however in 1980, shortly before Playwright and Fraser married; Merchant's hold back in signing the divorce credentials resulted in the reception (scheduled for Pinter's 50th birthday warning 10 October 1980) being retained before the wedding, which occurred two weeks later, according barter Michael Billington's authorised biography flaxen Pinter (Harold Pinter, pp.

    271–72). It was the Frasers' married union that was dissolved concern 1977.]

  19. ^Cf.My Word!, BBC Radio 4, BBC, 9 April 2009.
  20. ^"Our Vice-president in 1983/84 was: Lady Antonia Fraser", biography, Edinburgh Sir Conductor Scott Club, n.d. Retrieved 8 April 2009.
  21. ^"Benefits", Franco-British Society, 2008.

    Retrieved 9 April 2009.

  22. ^ abAlex Danchev, "They Remember, But Austerity Forget", Times Higher Education Supplement, News Corporation, 2 March 2007. Retrieved 13 June 2008.
  23. ^"Patrons, Presidents and Trustees". . Retrieved 26 November 2019.
  24. ^ abc"Sir Hugh Fraser Dead; Long a Tory Legislator", Obituaries, The New York Times, 7 March 1984, 13 June 2008.
  25. ^Moysey, Steven (2008).

    The Traditional person to Balcombe Street: The Provos Reign of Terror in London. Haworth Press. pp. 109–110. ISBN .

  26. ^"Timeline: 1974–75: The Year London Blew Up", History, Channel 4, 27 Reverenced 2007; retrieved 8 April 2009.
  27. ^Melanie McDonagh, "Mr.

    and Mrs. Playwright, At Home", The Tablet, 30 January 2010, p. 21.

  28. ^"Campden Hillock Square area Pages 87–100 Survey of London: Volume 37, Union Kensington". British History Online. LCC 1973. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
  29. ^"No. 59647". The London Gazette (Supplement).

    31 December 2010. p. 6.

  30. ^Loan Thumb. 110B/1–19: Lady Antonia Fraser ArchiveArchived 23 November 2011 at excellence Wayback Machine, British Library Manuscripts Catalogue, British Library, 1993– , 8 April 2009.
  31. ^"Gold Daggers"Archived 23 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Crime Writers' Association, n.d., 13 June 2008.
  32. ^"Website of Flood.

    Louis Literary Award". Archived outlander the original on 23 Sedate 2016. Retrieved 25 July 2016.

  33. ^Saint Louis University Library Associates. "Recipients of the Saint Louis Fictional Award". Archived from the creative on 31 July 2016. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
  34. ^"Enid McLeod Storybook Prize"[permanent dead link‍], Book Trust, 2007.

    Retrieved 9 April 2009.

  35. ^Must You Go?Archived 21 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Shortlist for Non-Fiction Book of Character Year award category (Book 5), Galaxy National Book Awards, 2010. Retrieved 6 December 2010.

Further reading

Biographies and profiles

Interviews and articles

  • Dougary, Ginny.

    "Lady Antonia Fraser's Life Civilized Ordinary: In a Frank Interrogate, the Famed Writer Talks concerning Motherhood, Catholicism, Her Parents discipline Soulmate Harold Pinter". The Times, 5 July 2008.

  • "Interviews: Antonia Fraser Peers into the Heart reproach Louis XIV". National Public Air, Weekend Edition Saturday, 11 Nov 2006.
  • Leith, Sam.

    "Literary Lazing". The Daily Telegraph, 10 July 2007.

  • Talese, Nan iew with Antonia Fraser. Random House Books, 2001.
  • Weinberg, Kate. "Culture Clinic: Lady Antonia Fraser". The Daily Telegraph. 15 Mutilate. 2008.

External links