marie antoinette the journey by antonia fraser

įrom 1983 to 1984, she was president of Edinburgh's Sir Walter Scott Club. She also has written detective novels, the most popular involving a character named Jemima Shore, and they were adapted into the television series Jemima Shore Investigates, which aired in the UK in 1983. From 1988 to 1989, she was president of English PEN, and she chaired its Writers in Prison Committee. Fraser won the Wolfson History Award in 1984 for The Weaker Vessel, a study of women's lives in 17th-century England. Her first major work, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, was Mary, Queen of Scots (1969), which was followed by several other biographies, including Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973). Career įraser began work as an 'all-purpose assistant' for George Weidenfeld at Weidenfeld & Nicolson (her 'only job'), which later became her own publisher and part of Orion Publishing Group, which publishes her works in the UK. Prior to going to Oxford in 1950, she was a debutante in the London social season. She was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, St Mary's School, Ascot, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford the last was also her mother's alma mater. Before his own conversion in his thirties following a nervous breakdown in the Army, as she explains: 'My father was Protestant Church of Ireland, and my mother was Unitarian up to the age of 20 when she abandoned it.' In response to criticism of her writing about Oliver Cromwell, she has said, 'I have no Catholic blood'.

Her 'maternal grandparents were Unitarians – a non-conformist faith with a strong emphasis on social reform'. Īs a teenager, she and her siblings converted to Catholicism, following the conversions of their parents. As the daughter of an earl, she is accorded the courtesy title 'Lady' and thus customarily addressed formally as 'Lady Antonia'. Family background and education įraser is the first-born of the eight children of The 7th Earl of Longford (1905–2001) and his wife, Elizabeth, Countess of Longford, née Elizabeth Harman (1906–2002). She is the widow of the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter (1930–2008), and prior to his death was also known as Lady Antonia Pinter.

Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, CH, DBE, FRSL ( née Pakenham born 27 August 1932) is a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction.

From the BBC programme Desert Island Discs, 27 July 2008.

Marie antoinette the journey by antonia fraser