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 the Earl and Countess of Longford (Frank and Elizabeth Pakenham), who were both eminent writers, Labour supporters and Catholic converts. Their eight children became child converts to the Catholic Church. As the daughter of an Earl, Antonia Fraser is entitled to be called "Lady Antonia."
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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 Sir Hugh Fraser, a Catholic MP when she found out she was pregnant with his child.
They had three sons — Benjamian ("Benjy"), Damian, and Orlando — and three daughters — Rebecca, Flora, and Natasha. Sir Hugh was a Conservative Unionist MP in the House of Commons, sitting for Stafford.
Sir Hugh and Lady Antonia, together with Caroline Kennedy who was visiting at the time, were almost blown up by an IRA car bomb on October 23, 1975. However, the bomb exploded prematurely, instead killing another motorist, the well-respected cancer researcher Dr. Gordon Hamilton-Fairley.
As a Catholic, Lady Antonia caused a public scandal in 1977 by leaving her husband for playwright Harold Pinter and the satirical magazine Private Eye for some years routinely referred to her as "Lady Magnesia Freelove". Pinter's then-wife, the actress Vivien Merchant, spoke publicly of her distress at his abandonment of her and made cutting remarks about Fraser in the press, including the famous comment that "she has very big feet".
Fraser and Pinter married in 1980, when Pinter and Merchant's divorce was finalized, and they lived in Holland Park, west London.
Two of Lady Antonia's daughters, Rebecca Fraser and Flora Fraser, have also written historical biographies.
[edit] Awards
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1969)
- Wolfson History Prize
- Medallion of the Historical Association (2000)
- Crime Writers' Association Macallan Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction
- Franco-British Society's Enid McLeod Literary prize
[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 known 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 known 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 known as The 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 known as Faith and Treason: The Gunpowder Plot)
- Marie Antoinette (2001; also known as Marie Antoinette: The Journey) - ISBN 0-385-48949-8
- Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (2006)
[edit] Jemima Shore Novels
- Quiet as a Nun (1977)
- The Wild Island (1978)
- 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 Shore at the Sunny Grave (1991)
- Political Death (1995)
[edit] Anthologies
[edit] Reference
- Snowman, Daniel "Lady Antonia Fraser" page 26-28 from History Today, Volume 50, Issue 10, October 2000.
