Antonia Fraser is a writer of historical biographies. I have a few of her books on my shelves and have always found them very readable and informative. She has also written some crime novels and I have read and enjoyed a few of those. Her autobiography My History is about her early life and how she came to have a love of history and a wish to write biographies. I am not sure where I got this book from but think that maybe it came from a charity bookshop in Thornbury, near Bristol, which I frequent when I am in the area. I have deduced this because the rather battered copy I have contains a change of address card for a person moving to Thornbury in January 2018. This had obviously been used as a bookmark and remained in the book for some years – I hope that the owner hasn’t needed the details on the card.
Antonia Fraser was the daughter of Lord Pakenham, later Lord Longford, a well-known Labour politician and academic who became especially connected with his campaigns for prison reform. Her parents were fascinated by politics, with each of them standing for Parliament several times. She was the eldest of eight children, born in 1932, and brought up by a nanny. Her parents’ activities and background meant that they had many contacts among the aristocracy and the establishment – People who appear in this book include Oswald Moseley, Winston Churchill, JRR Tolkein, Evelyn Waugh and TS Eliot.
The young Antonia had a privileged life, attending a prep school and then a convent school, based mainly in Oxford. She decided very early in her life that she wanted to write history and she attended Oxford University to study there. She was employed briefly as a secretary at a publishers, a job that her mother obtained for her, but otherwise attended a lot of parties and went on holiday frequently. Her fascination with history seemed to be a very romantic one as she imagined herself living in past times, although her books are grounded in fact.
I found this an interesting account of a life very different from my own. She writes well about the issues within her family and her urge to write. I am, however, pretty sure that, certainly at first, her access to archives and publishers was assisted by her title (she is Lady Antonia Fraser) and her father’s networks.
I have a small collection of biographies of writers and I will include this book on that shelf.
