Lady Antonia Fraser DBE |
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Antonia Fraser in 2010
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Born | Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham 27 August 1932 London, England |
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Nationality | British | ||
Period | 1969 – present | ||
Genre | Biography, detective fiction | ||
Spouse |
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Children | Six (three sons and three daughters) with Fraser, one stepson with Pinter | ||
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Website | |||
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Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, DBE (born 27 August 1932), 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 (1930–2008), and prior to his death was also known as Antonia Pinter.
Fraser is the daughter of Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford (1905–2001), and his wife, Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford, née Elizabeth Harman (1906–2002). As the daughter of an Earl, she is accorded the honorific courtesy title "Lady" and thus customarily addressed formally as "Lady Antonia".
As a teenager, she and her siblings converted to Catholicism, following the conversions of their parents. 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 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."
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.
She 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.