This is a beautiful and loving memoir. Using mostly her own diary entries, Antonia Fraser recounts her relationship with Harold Pinter. At first the minimal nature of the narration explaining the people and events frustrated me (there are a lot of first names sprinkled about, some of them turni...
When one gets sick, it's always assumed that it's the perfect time to thin one's personal to-read pile. In some ways it is: after all, it's not as if one can get up and go to work, or have life in general cut into one's reading time when one is supposed to be lying down and recovering. Unfortunat...
My copy of Lady Antonia Fraser's "Marie-Antoinette, The Journey" (Anchor Books, 2002) sports on its cover the round face of Kirsten Dunst which, as anyone who has studied portraits of Marie-Antoinette knows, is in sharp contrast to the lovely oval countenance of the real queen. I found it annoyin...
Tada! After a foolishly long time and a couple of breaks I have finished this book. It didn't take me forever to read because it was boring (it was pretty interesting), it was just a little like wading through treacle though.It was an interesting period, covering before, during and after Cromwell...
When it comes to history about people who didn't necessarily write down their stories or legends, it can be very difficult separating myth from fact. But thanks to the diligence of modern historians and accidental discoveries brought about by excavation (or simply someone diving or fishing in th...
My second time to read an Antonia Fraser (born 1932) book. My first by her was a biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey (4 stars). Lady Antonia Fraser is the widow of Harold Pinter (1930-2008), the 2005 Nobel for Literature winner. Although I liked this book, I thought that Lady Fraser was a be...
Everything you ever wanted or needed to know about Charles II of England, complete with pictures. Very interesting tome along with much detail about the King who ruled England from 1660-1685. Mary Queen of Scots great grandson was an avid sportsmen, gardener and scientist..this King is a fascin...
" 'We don't want to hurt her. We must remember that. All of us. She is after all innocent ... Well, isn't she?'"With these words the leader of the secret group tries to establish the ground rules of its conspiracy concerning the bride, HRH Princess Amy of Cumberland, a 22-year-old British Prin...
Barely average as a murder mystery. Antonia Fraser might be a decent biographer, but she's clearly better at analysing historical characters and events than creating her own. Oxford Blood takes place, rather obviously, at an Oxford college, where there's mystery about the true parentage of an ari...
Structurally this was much better than the first two; Fraser has found her ground in the genre, here, writing an actual mystery in which her detective investigates, set in a London social milieu that she can write both comfortably and believably. It had a taste of the guilty pleasure, her combin...
Bestselling author Fraser combines her passion for history with her wickedly readable fiction in her most glittering Jemima Shore mystery yet. It seems a 17-century viscount has been stepping out of his portrait--just before the violent death of his 16th successor. While a bitter family feud ensu...
For much of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I the repression meted out against Catholics increased almost annually. You can understand why the Queen might have been a bit annoyed with the Catholics – she might well have won the Spanish Armada, but even the joy of winning would have to have been tem...
When the wayward lady Imogen Swain summons journalist Jemima Shore to her home, Jemima once again finds herself in the thick of love affairs--old and new--intrigue, and betrayal. For the colorful Lady Imogen kept diaries documenting her passionate affair with a rising young politician who has sin...
This is not a mystery, really. Yes, there is a death, and it is mysterious, but it is really more of a take on a 1960s gothic -- a woman who is an outsider goes to the strange, empty house and is surrounded by family tensions she does not understand and menaced by forces which she is only vaguel...
This, coupled with the very serious nature of the offence with which he was charged, was sufficient to convince the magistrate that the accused should be kept in custody. 'And a good thing too!' Matt Harwood commented to Jemima Shore, when Jim Blagge, neatly dressed and im...
Sleepily, confused, she thought: he has gone, but he promised to stay. Morning had come and her night lover had fled as Cupid had fled from Psyche to avoid the dangerous contact of the dawn, and yet he had promised... Then Ben Beauregard was saying something of more immedi...
It was that bet, I said. That’s what I told the detective, Tomlinson. I saw it all. I was in a privileged position, wasn’t I? “We both were,” says Bella, adding in that reproving little voice of hers, “We both looked after the Colonel and Lady Sissy.” Then she clicks her tongue, a thoroughly madd...
One thing pleased: when he said “With all my worldly goods I thee endow”, he put a purse upon the book with two hundred guineas.’DOROTHY DOWAGER COUNTESS OF SUNDERLAND ON HER NIECE’S BRIDEGROOM, 1680On the eve of the Restoration, Pen, Sir Ralph Verney’s second sister, wrote: ‘I pray God send we m...
Elizabeth had already left conflicting impressions upon Mary and the Scottish nobles as to what she regarded the desirable outcome of this conference to be. Their own intentions were equally at variance. Of those present, only Moray was able to show true singleness of purpose, in that he intended...
Thereafter, only a short entry is given, with a note indicating where the first full reference can be found in brackets, i.e. in Chapter Four, note 6, ‘Tacitus (III–I), p. 265’ refers back to Chapter Three, note 1, Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, translated and with an Introduction by Micha...
It took time for the blur of inordinate noise to distribute itself into proper sense. Finally Jemima Shore, standing next to Charlotte Lackland at the Taynford Grange fete, understood what was being said to be: "Lady Manfred has found a body." Charlotte Lackland had evidently understood to the s...
A great distance will separate us . . . Do so much good to the French people that they can say that I have sent them an angel.” MARIA TERESA’S PARTING WORDS TO HER DAUGHTER, 1770 As Count Khevenhüller set about the highly elaborate preparations for a daughter of Austria to...