Antonia Fraser
Antonia Fraser
Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, DBE, née Pakenham, is a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction. She is the widow of the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter, and prior to his death was also known as Antonia Pinter...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth27 August 1932
writing cold ifs
If I write that it was a cold day, you can be sure I know it was a cold day because Pepys told us.
book childhood france
The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!
people evil moral
I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.
heiress glad
I'm glad I was never an heiress.
long people terrorism
As long as you persecute people, you will actually throw up terrorism.
book reading squares
I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful book.
writing bedtime prison
That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.
long historical gaps
It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.
writing self-confidence maine
Her imperturbable self-confidence (Duchesse de Maine) caused Madame de Stael to write that the Duchesse believed in herself the same way she believed in God, without explanation or discussion.
justice almighty-god persons
Of course there's no such thing as a totally objective person, except Almighty God, if she exists.
firsts privilege never-forget
As the Dauphine stepped out of her carriage on to the ceremonial carpet that had been laid down, it was the Duc de Choiseul who was given the privilege of the first salute. Presented with the Duc by Prince Starhemberg, Marie Antoinette exclaimed: 'I shall never forget that you are responsible for my happiness!
eye self order
[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman.
forgotten heard marie
I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all. marie antoinette
mother oxford doctors
My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor.