Antonia Fraser

Antonia Fraser (2010)

Lady Antonia Fraser Margaret Caroline CH , DBE (* 27. August 1932 in Bayswater , London as Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham ) is a British bestseller - author and author of historical biographies.

Life

Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham's family comes from the Irish - English aristocracy . Her father was Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford (1905-2001), an associate professor of politics at Oxford , who unsuccessfully as Labor -Kandidat for the House of applied and after the war to the upper house moved in, where he as an opponent of pornography known but also as a social reformer. Antonia Pakenham's mother, Elizabeth Longford (1906–2002), a recognized historian, also wrote more than a dozen books. Together with her siblings, she grew up in a world of literature and, even more unusual, a world of Anglicans converting to Catholicism . Your great uncle is Lord Dunsany .

She attended the Dragon School in Oxford, where she played rugby, the Catholic school St. Mary's Convent at Ascot and studied history at Oxford University (St. Margaret Hall).

In 1957 she married the Scottish aristocrat and politician Sir Hugh Fraser (1918-1984), with whom she had three daughters and three sons. Antonia Fraser got down to writing through the publisher George Weidenfeld , for whose publishing house she worked as an editor and wrote books for young people with retelling of the stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood . In 1963 she published a book on dolls - still a standard work today - and shortly afterwards a work on toys. Her first major biography was Mary, Queen of Scots in 1969 , which also gave her her breakthrough internationally (she is as well known and networked in the USA as it is in Great Britain) and has been translated into eleven languages. This was followed by biographies of Oliver Cromwell and other personalities from British history and historical women such as Marie Antoinette . Her non-fiction books have been translated into several languages, including German . In the mid-1970s, she successfully ventured into the world of crime fiction .

In 1977, her marriage to Hugh Fraser ended in divorce. Two years earlier she had met the playwright and later Nobel Prize winner for literature, Harold Pinter , an affair that became public. Harold Pinter left his wife - actress Vivien Merchant - in 1977 to live with Antonia Fraser. After Pinter's divorce, they married in 1980. The couple lived together at Holland Park in London's upscale West End until Pinter's death in December 2008 . Antonia Fraser has lived there in her house since 1959. Antonia Fraser has three sons and three daughters from her first marriage.

After she published a book about her time with Pinter in 2010, she published an autobiographical work about her youth in 2014 entitled My History: A Memoir of Growing Up .

On October 22, 1975, she and her husband narrowly escaped an IRA attack while Caroline Kennedy was visiting her home in Holland Park. A car bomb exploded under her Jaguar, killing cancer researcher Gordon Hamilton Fairley, a neighbor of the Frasers, who was walking his dog.

Offices and Awards

• 1970: James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the Biography category for Mary Queen of Scots
• 1974–1975: Chair of the Society of Authors
• 1983–1984: President of The Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club
• 1984: Wolfson History Prize for The weaker vessel
• 1985–1986: Chair of the Crimewriters Association
• 1988–1989: President of the British PEN
• 1992: Commander des Order of the British Empire (CBE)
• 1996: Crime Writers Association's Gold Dagger
• 2011: Dame Commander des Order of the British Empire (DBE)
• 2017: Member of the Order of the Companions of Honor (CH)

She has four honorary doctorates (University of Hull, Sussex, Nottingham, St. Andrews).

Name in different phases of life

• 1932-1956: Lady Antonia Pakenham
• 1956-1977: Lady Antonia Fraser
• 1980: Antonia Pinter

Book adaptation

• 2006: Marie Antoinette - Director: Sofia Coppola

Works

Historical works:

• Mary Queen of Scots , Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1969
  • German edition: Maria Stuart, Queen of Scots. A biography , Heyne 1989, Claassen 1996
• Cromwell: The Lord Protector , Knopf 1973
• King James VI and I 1974
• Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration , Knopf 1979 (in Great Britain as King Charles II , London: Futura)
• The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England 1984
• The Warrior Queens: The Legends and Lives of Women Who Have Lead Their Nations in War , Knopf 1988 ( Boadicea's Chariot 1988)
• The six wives of Henry VIII. , 1992
  • German translation: The six wives of Henry VIII Claasen 1995, Heyne 1996
• Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot , 1996, Anchor Books 1997
• Marie Antoinette , Doubleday 2001
  • German edition: dtv, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-421-04267-5 .
• Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King , New York: Doubleday 2006

Autobiographical:

• Must you go? My Life with Harold Pinter , Orion Publishing Group, London, 2010, ISBN 978-0-297859710 .
• My History: A Memoir of Growing Up , 2014

As editor:

• The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England , 1975
• Scottish Love Poems, a personal anthology , 1975
• Love Letters: an anthology 1976
• Heroes and Heroines 1980
• The Pleasure of Reading 1992

Crime novels:

• Quiet as a Nun , 1977
  • German edition: Die Nun , 1978, Weltbild 2005
• A Splash of Red , 1981
  • German edition: Orgie in Rot , Piper 1995
• The cavalier case , 1993
  • German edition: Das Kavaliersdelikt , Piper 1993
• Cool repentance 1982
• Oxford Blood , Norton 1985
  • German edition: Blue blood is not everything , Piper 1994
• Political Death , 1994
• Contributor to George Hardinge (Ed.) A Tool of Justice. Master murders , Blanvalet 1989

Others:

• Dolls , Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1963
  • German edition: Puppen , Ariel 1964, Schöne Puppen , Battenberg 1984
• A history of toys , New York: Delacorte Press 1966
  • German edition: Toys , Stalling 1966, Löwit 1976
• The Wild Island , German edition: Wilde Insel , Zsolnay 1979, Rowohlt 1981 (novel)
• Robin Hood , 1955 (as Antonia Pakenham), Dragon Books 1973, Orion Children's Books 1994 (children's and young people's books, illustrations by her daughter Rebecca Fraser, among others)
• King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table , 1970, Orion Children's Books 1994 (children's and youth book illustrations Rebecca Fraser)

Web links

Commons : Antonia Fraser  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Antonia Fraser in the catalog of the German National Library
• Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham on thepeerage.com , accessed September 18, 2016.
• Nicholas Wroe, The history woman, The Guardian, August 24, 2012
• Rachel Cooke, review of Antonia Frasers Must you go? My life with Harold Pinter , Observer, January 17, 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lady Antonia Fraser ( Memento of the original of December 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ The history woman - Antonia Fraser
3. ↑ Lady Antonia Fraser
4. ^ Writer's rooms: Antonia Fraser
5. ^ The New York Times - Sir Hugh Fraser Dead; Long a Tory Legislator
6. ^ Nicholas Wroe, The history women, The Guardian, Aug. 24, 2012
7. ^ Writer's rooms: Antonia Fraser
8. ↑ Lady Antonia Fraser ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ^ The New York Times - Antonia Fraser: The Lady is a writer
10. ^ Vanity Fair - Sofia's Choice