As a teenager,4 she and her siblings converted to Catholicism, following the conversions of their parents.15 Her "maternal grandparents were Unitarians – a non-conformist faith with a strong emphasis on social reform". In response to criticism of her writing about Oliver Cromwell, she has said, "I have no Catholic blood". Before his own conversion in his thirties following a nervous breakdown in the British Army, as she explains: "My father was Protestant , and my mother was Unitarian up to the age of 20 when she abandoned it."
This page is based on “Antonia Fraser” from English Wikipedia, (r1372992174) CC BY-SA 4.0 used under the license. The original authors are listed in its page history.
Fraser's first major work was Mary, Queen of Scots (1969), published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, which was followed by several other biographies, including Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973).311
Fraser acknowledges she is "less interested in ideas than in 'the people who led nations' and so on. I don't think I could ever have written a history of political thought or anything like that. I'd have to come at it another way."12 Fraser's study, The Warrior Queens (1989), is an account of military royal women since the days of Boadicea and Cleopatra. In 1992, a year after Alison Weir's book The Six Wives of Henry VIII, she published a book with the same title.
She chronicled the life and times of Charles II in a well-reviewed 1979 eponymous biography.11 The book was cited as an influence on the 2003 BBC/A&E mini-series Charles II: The Power & the Passion, in a featurette on the DVD, by Rufus Sewell, who played the title character.13 Fraser served as editor for many monarchical biographies, including those featured in the Kings and Queens of England and Royal History of England series, and in 1996 she also published a book entitled The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, which won both the St. Louis Literary Award and the Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Non-Fiction Gold Dagger.1114
Her book Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001), was adapted for the film Marie Antoinette (2006), directed by Sofia Coppola, with Kirsten Dunst in the title role, and Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (2006).15 She contemplated a biography of Queen Elizabeth I, but shelved the idea as this subject has already been extensively covered.316
Fraser won the Wolfson History Award in 1984 for The Weaker Vessel, a study of women's lives in 17th-century England.11
Other writing
Fraser has written detective novels, the most popular a series of ten written between 1977 and 1995 and involving a female television personality and detective named Jemima Shore; the latter were adapted into the television series Jemima Shore Investigates, which aired in the UK in 1983.7 Early publications included volumes on dolls and toys. Her first book was a volume about King Arthur, one edition of which was illustrated by her eldest daughter; it was written for a series for Marks and Spencer, as was a later volume about Robin Hood.17
Media and societies
From 1988 to 1989 Fraser was president of English PEN, and she chaired its Writers in Prison Committee.18
From 1983 to 1984 she was president of the Sir Walter Scott Club in Edinburgh.19 She serves as a judge for the Enid McLeod Literary Prize, awarded by the Franco-British Society, previously winning that prize for her biography Marie Antoinette.2021
Fraser's first memoir Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter was published in January 2010 and she read a shortened version as BBC Radio Four's Book of the Week that month.16 Her second memoir, My History. A Memoir of Growing Up was published a few years later.
On 22 October 1975 Hugh and Antonia Fraser, together with Caroline Kennedy, who was visiting them at their Holland Park home, in Kensington, west London, were almost blown up by a Provisional Irish Republican Army car bomb placed under the wheels of his Jaguar car, which had been triggered to go off at 9 am when he left the house; the bomb exploded, killing the cancer researcher Gordon Hamilton Fairley. Fairley, a neighbour of the Frasers, had been walking his dog, when he noticed something amiss and stopped to examine the bomb.4242526
In 1975 she began an affair with the playwright Harold Pinter, who was then married to the actress Vivien Merchant.17 In 1977, after she had been living with Pinter for two years, the Frasers' union was legally dissolved.17 Merchant spoke about her distress publicly to the press, which quoted her cutting remarks about her rival, but she resisted divorcing Pinter.17 In 1980, after Merchant signed divorce papers, Fraser and Pinter married147 in the Roman Catholic Church.27 Harold Pinter died of cancer on 24 December 2008, aged 78.3
Fraser's uncatalogued papers (relating to her "Early Writing", "Fiction" and "Non-Fiction") are on loan at the British Library.31 Papers by and relating to Fraser are also catalogued as part of the Harold Pinter Archive, which is part of its permanent collection of Additional Manuscripts.
Daniel Snowman, "Lady Antonia Fraser", History Today 50.10 (October 2000): pp. 26–28, History Today, n.d., 8 April 2009 (excerpt; full article available to subscribers or pay-per-view customers). ↩
"Antonia Fraser to tell Harold Pinter 'love story'. Historical biographer will publish her 'portrait of a marriage' to the Nobel laureate in January 2010", The Guardian, 9 June 2009. Retrieved 19 June 2009. [There is a factual error in this account; the Pinter-Merchant marriage was not dissolved in 1977, as stated, but in 1980, shortly before Pinter and Fraser married; Merchant's delay in signing the divorce papers resulted in the reception (scheduled for Pinter's 50th birthday on 10 October 1980) being held before the wedding, which occurred two weeks later, according to Michael Billington's authorised biography of Pinter (Harold Pinter, pp. 271–72). It was the Frasers' marital union that was dissolved in 1977.] ↩↩2
Must You Go?Archived 21 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Shortlist for Non-Fiction Book of The Year award category (Book 5), Galaxy National Book Awards, 2010. Retrieved 6 December 2010. ↩
As a teenager,4 she and her siblings converted to Catholicism, following the conversions of their parents.15 Her "maternal grandparents were Unitarians – a non-conformist faith with a strong emphasis on social reform". In response to criticism of her writing about Oliver Cromwell, she has said, "I have no Catholic blood". Before his own conversion in his thirties following a nervous breakdown in the , as she explains: "My father was Protestant , and my mother was Unitarian up to the age of 20 when she abandoned it."
Fraser's first major work was Mary, Queen of Scots (1969), published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, which was followed by several other biographies, including Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973).311
Fraser acknowledges she is "less interested in ideas than in 'the people who led nations' and so on. I don't think I could ever have written a history of political thought or anything like that. I'd have to come at it another way."12 Fraser's study, The Warrior Queens (1989), is an account of military royal women since the days of Boadicea and Cleopatra. In 1992, a year after Alison Weir's book The Six Wives of Henry VIII, she published a book with the same title.
She chronicled the life and times of Charles II in a well-reviewed 1979 eponymous biography.11 The book was cited as an influence on the 2003 BBC/A&E mini-series Charles II: The Power & the Passion, in a featurette on the DVD, by Rufus Sewell, who played the title character.13 Fraser served as editor for many monarchical biographies, including those featured in the Kings and Queens of England and Royal History of England series, and in 1996 she also published a book entitled The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, which won both the St. Louis Literary Award and the Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Non-Fiction Gold Dagger.1114
Her book Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001), was adapted for the film Marie Antoinette (2006), directed by Sofia Coppola, with Kirsten Dunst in the title role, and Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (2006).15 She contemplated a biography of Queen Elizabeth I, but shelved the idea as this subject has already been extensively covered.316
Fraser won the Wolfson History Award in 1984 for The Weaker Vessel, a study of women's lives in 17th-century England.11
Other writing
Fraser has written detective novels, the most popular a series of ten written between 1977 and 1995 and involving a female television personality and detective named Jemima Shore; the latter were adapted into the television series Jemima Shore Investigates, which aired in the UK in 1983.7 Early publications included volumes on dolls and toys. Her first book was a volume about King Arthur, one edition of which was illustrated by her eldest daughter; it was written for a series for Marks and Spencer, as was a later volume about Robin Hood.17
Media and societies
From 1988 to 1989 Fraser was president of English PEN, and she chaired its Writers in Prison Committee.18
From 1983 to 1984 she was president of the Sir Walter Scott Club in Edinburgh.19 She serves as a judge for the Enid McLeod Literary Prize, awarded by the Franco-British Society, previously winning that prize for her biography Marie Antoinette.2021
Fraser's first memoir Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter was published in January 2010 and she read a shortened version as BBC Radio Four's Book of the Week that month.16 Her second memoir, My History. A Memoir of Growing Up was published a few years later.
On 22 October 1975 Hugh and Antonia Fraser, together with Caroline Kennedy, who was visiting them at their Holland Park home, in Kensington, west London, were almost blown up by a Provisional Irish Republican Army car bomb placed under the wheels of his Jaguar car, which had been triggered to go off at 9 am when he left the house; the bomb exploded, killing the cancer researcher Gordon Hamilton Fairley. Fairley, a neighbour of the Frasers, had been walking his dog, when he noticed something amiss and stopped to examine the bomb.4242526
In 1975 she began an affair with the playwright Harold Pinter, who was then married to the actress Vivien Merchant.17 In 1977, after she had been living with Pinter for two years, the Frasers' union was legally dissolved.17 Merchant spoke about her distress publicly to the press, which quoted her cutting remarks about her rival, but she resisted divorcing Pinter.17 In 1980, after Merchant signed divorce papers, Fraser and Pinter married147 in the Roman Catholic Church.27 Harold Pinter died of cancer on 24 December 2008, aged 78.3
Fraser's uncatalogued papers (relating to her "Early Writing", "Fiction" and "Non-Fiction") are on loan at the British Library.31 Papers by and relating to Fraser are also catalogued as part of the Harold Pinter Archive, which is part of its permanent collection of Additional Manuscripts.
Daniel Snowman, "Lady Antonia Fraser", History Today 50.10 (October 2000): pp. 26–28, History Today, n.d., 8 April 2009 (excerpt; full article available to subscribers or pay-per-view customers). ↩
"Antonia Fraser to tell Harold Pinter 'love story'. Historical biographer will publish her 'portrait of a marriage' to the Nobel laureate in January 2010", The Guardian, 9 June 2009. Retrieved 19 June 2009. [There is a factual error in this account; the Pinter-Merchant marriage was not dissolved in 1977, as stated, but in 1980, shortly before Pinter and Fraser married; Merchant's delay in signing the divorce papers resulted in the reception (scheduled for Pinter's 50th birthday on 10 October 1980) being held before the wedding, which occurred two weeks later, according to Michael Billington's authorised biography of Pinter (Harold Pinter, pp. 271–72). It was the Frasers' marital union that was dissolved in 1977.] ↩↩2
Must You Go?Archived 21 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Shortlist for Non-Fiction Book of The Year award category (Book 5), Galaxy National Book Awards, 2010. Retrieved 6 December 2010. ↩