Antonia Fraser

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Lady Antonia Fraser (Pinter), CBE (born August 27, 1932, as Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham) is a British author of history and novels, best known for writing biographies. She is the daughter of Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, and his wife, Countess of Longford (Elizabeth Pakenham). Like all her siblings, she became a child convert to the Catholic Church.

As the daughter of an Earl, Antonia Fraser's title (form of address) is "Lady Antonia"; however, her identification of herself as an author is as "Antonia Fraser" and also, in some other circumstances, as her married name "Antonia Pinter." She has been married to Harold Pinter since 1980.

Two of the most recent of her thirteen non-fiction books are Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001, 2002), which has been made into the film Marie Antoinette (2006), directed by Sofia Coppola, and Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (2006).

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[edit] Life and career

Lady Antonia was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Her first major work was Mary, Queen of Scots (1969). She followed it up with various other biographies, including Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973). She won the Wolfson History Award in 1984 for The Weaker Vessel, a study of women's lives in 17th century England. She was President of English PEN from 1988 to 89, and was Chairman of its Writers in Prison Committee.

In addition, she writes detective novels, with the most popular involving a character named Jemima Shore. A television series based on these stories was aired in the UK in 1983.

More recently, Lady Antonia published The Warrior Queens, the story of various military royal women since the days of Boadicea and Cleopatra. In 1992 she published The Six Wives of Henry VIII. It was published only a year after Alison Weir's book of the same title, though academics felt that Fraser's work was the more impartial.

Fraser later published The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605. Her acclaimed and in-depth biography of France's last legitimate queen, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, was adapted for film by Sofia Coppola, with the title role being played by Kirsten Dunst.

Fraser has also served as the editor for many monarchical biographies, including those featured in the Kings and Queens of England and Royal History of England series.

[edit] Personal life

In 1956, Lady Antonia married Scottish Catholic aristocrat and MP Sir Hugh Fraser (1918-1984). Sir Hugh was a Conservative Unionist MP in the House of Commons, sitting for Stafford. During her marriage to him, which ended in 1977, they had three sons — Benjamin ("Benji"), Damian, and Orlando — and three daughters — Rebecca, Flora, and Natasha. Her eldest daughters Rebecca and Flora have both written biographies. Her eldest son, Benji, works for the Bank of New York and her youngest daughter, Natasha, has completed a life of Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel, published in 2002. Damian works for [UBS] Warburg's in Mexico [as head of Latin American equities strategy] and her youngest son, Orlando, is a barrister specialising in commercial law. She has 16 grandchildren.

On October 22, 1975, Sir Hugh and Lady Antonia, together with Caroline Kennedy, who was visiting them at their Holland Park home, in Kensington, West London, were almost blown up by an IRA car bomb placed under the wheels of his Jaguar, which had been triggered to go off at 9 a.m. when he left the house; the bomb exploded prematurely when it was examined and accidentally set off by a passerby, the well-respected cancer researcher Dr. Gordon Hamilton-Fairley, who was walking his dog ("The Year London Blew Up").

In 1975, Lady Antonia met and began an affair with playwright Harold Pinter, who was then married to the actress Vivien Merchant, resulting in fodder for the British tabloid "scandal sheets". In 1977, after she had been living with Pinter for a couple of years, the Frasers' union was legally dissolved. Vivien Merchant spoke about her distress publicly to the press, which quoted her cutting remarks about Lady Antonia, but she resisted divorcing Pinter. In 1980, after Merchant finally agreed to sign the divorce papers, Fraser and Pinter married. They still live in the Fraser family home in Holland Park.

[edit] Awards

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Non-Fiction Works

  • Mary, Queen of Scots (1969) - [ISBN 0-385-31129-X]
  • King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1970)
  • Dolls (1973)
  • Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973); also published as Cromwell: The Lord Protector - ISBN 0-8021-3766-0
  • King James VI and I (1974)
  • The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England [Editor] (1975)
  • King Charles II (1979); also published as Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration and Charles II – [ISBN 0-7538-1403-X]
  • The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-century England (1984)
  • The Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot (1988); also published as Warrior Queens: The Legends and Lives of Women Who Have Lead Their Nations in War
  • The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992)
  • The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 (1996); also published as Faith and Treason: The Gunpowder Plot – ISBN 0-385-47189-0
  • Marie Antoinette (2001); also published as Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2002) - ISBN 0-385-48949-8
  • Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (2006) – ISBN 0-297-82997-1

[edit] Jemima Shore Novels

[edit] Anthologies

  • Scottish Love Poems (1975)
  • Love Letters (1976)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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