Lady Antonia Fraser, née Pakenham) Biography

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British biographer and historian, the daughter of Elizabeth Longford and, since 1980, the wife of Harold Pinter; she was born in London and educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. The diligent scholarship and imaginative sympathy with its subject of Mary Queen of Scots (1969) established her reputation as a biographer; among Fraser's subsequent biographical works are Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973), King Charles II (1979), and The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992). The Weaker Vessel (1984) reviews the social and cultural positions of women in the seventeenth century, and Boadicea's Chariot (1988) is a historical survey of women who have exercised power. She has also written a series of detective novels featuring the elegant heroine ‘Jemima Shore’; these include Quiet as a Nun (1977), A Splash of Red (1981), and Political Death (1994). The popular anthologies Scottish Love Poems (1975) and Love Letters (1977) were edited by Fraser.