Antonia Fraser – författare

The six wives of Henry VIII- Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and catherine Parr- have become defined in popular sense not so much by their lives but by the the way their lives ended. But, as Antonia Fraser conclusively proves, they were rich and feisty characters. They may have been victims of Henry's obsession with a male heir, but they were not willing victims. On the contrary, they displayed considerable strength and intelligence at a time when their sex supposedly possessed little of either. Inevitably there was great rivalry between them, and there was jealousy too- the desperate jealousy of the King who discovered himself betrayed. The story Antonia Fraser tells is romantic and cruel, funny and sad, dramatic and enthralling.

Each of Antonia Fraser’s four Jemima Shore mysteries has enlarged the audience for that redoubtable and unpremeditated sleuth. This new one is set against a theatrical background and shows all the narrative skills that have marked the works of its distinguished author along with an ever-increasing quality of suspense. It is the chilling story of Christobel, a beautiful and profligate actress, who thought she could just come back, repent, and resume with impunity the life she had deserted.

Back in print—Antonia Fraser's third Jemima Shore mystery, in which the intrepid and glamorous detective confronts sinister doings in a Bloomsbury penthouse. Everyone loved Chloe Fontaine. Tiny and exquisitely pretty, her fragile looks hid a considerable talent as a novelist. She had had a series of admirers, lovers, and husbands ever since her arrival in literary London. Her friends sometimes remarked on the odd contrast of her disorderly private life and the careful formality of her work, yet it hardly seemed to matter when even the critics doted on her. When Chloe strangely and suddenly disappears one hot summer day, Jemima Shore, who is left in charge of her flat, must find out why before it is too late.

When a murder takes place in a secluded tower at Blessed Eleanor's Convent in Sussex and the victim is an old school friend, Britain's most popular TV reporter Jemima Shore finds herself in the middle of a disturbing puzzle. The dead woman, a nun, was to inherit one of the largest fortunes in Britain.Jemima walks into the eye of a worldly storm of fear — and the more she learns, the clearer it becomes that more lives, including her own, are being threatened.Quiet as a Nun was a PBS Mystery! television presentation.

In this tale Jemima is reluctantly shooting a TV exposé — "Golden Lads and Girls" — on the exotic lifestyles of overprivileged undergraduates. Among them is Lord Saffron, the wealthy, twenty-year-old heir to the former foreign secretary. When a confession by a dying midwife throws Saffron's birth and bloodline into doubt, Jemima's interest in the documentary perks up considerably. Then a student is murdered, drawing Jemima into a case that will demand the utmost of her skills of detection.

There are five Jemima Shore tales, including her first case, which took place when she was fifteen and still at her convent school, the school featured later in Jemima's career in Quiet as a Nun. Jemima is at her sparkling best as she solves the case of the Parr children in a remote corner of the Scottish Highlands and elegantly deals with the case of the missing bride on a romantic Venetian honeymoon. Nor is she afraid to get wet at the Holland Pools where in-laws feud and plot. Relatives are also closely involved in the murder at Arcangelo's Salon, where Jemima has her hair done....Among other riches are four "true crime" stories and four mysteries, ending with a sophisticated tale about a group of friends holidaying in Tuscany.

Here, Jemima Shore, investigator and TV personality, arrives at Inverness Station for a Highland holiday. The sun is shining. Paradise, she thinks. But at that moment, she hears a voice: "All this way for a funeral."So begins an adventure far removed from Jemima's visions of heather-covered hills, crystal-clear streams, romantic men in kilts, fairy-tale castles....Instead, she is plunged into the strange world of the aristocratic Beauregard family with its tensions, its jealousies, and its violence, in many ways a primitive world dominated by the land and its possessing. The setting is the Wild Island itself, sometimes enchanting, but too often frighteningly remote; the streams, not silvery, but brown and sinister; her holiday home, with its disturbing, sometimes terrifying, influences; the people--the dashing war hero Colonel Henry and his sons, the forthright old priest Father Flanagan, Bridie the family servant, Clementina the wayward heiress...none of them quite what they seem.And then there is the specter of the Scottish "freedom fighters," in the shape of the self-styled army of the Red Rose.It all adds up to a brilliantly told story of mystery and intrigue on the Wild Island.

'Drama, betrayal, religion and sex, it's all here ... Fascinating' GUARDIAN'Beautifully paced, impeccably written ... Don't miss it' INDEPENDENT'Fraser is at her best here, lucid, authoritative and compassionate' SUNDAY TIMES 'Superbly researched ... the definitive work on the ill-fated queen' CATHOLIC HERALDMarie Antoinette's dramatic life-story continues to arouse fascination and controversy. To many people, she is still 'la reine méchante', whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: 'let them eat cake'. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny.In this gripping biography, Antonia Fraser examines her influence over the king, Louis XVI, the accusations and sexual slurs made against her, her patronage of the arts which enhanced French cultural life, her imprisonment, the death threats made against her, rumours of lesbian affairs, her trial (during which her young son was forced to testify to sexual abuse by his mother) and her eventual execution by guillotine in 1793.This is the only book you need to read on Marie Antoinette, one of the most iconic and divisive characters in history.

The bestselling historian's biography of a decisive figure in England's history.No Englishman has made more impact on the history of his nation than Oliver Cromwell; few have been so persistently maligned in the folklore of history. The central purpose of Antonia Fraser's book is the recreation of his life and character, freed from the distortions of myth and Royalist propaganda.Cromwell was a man of contradictions and surprising charm. This decisive and ruthless commander was also a country gentleman and a passionate connoisseur of music. Of Cromwell's fitness for high office, this fascinating biography leaves no doubt. Under his rule English prestige abroad rose to a level unequalled since Elizabeth I, yet his campaign in Ireland has cast a shadow over his reputation.Antonia Fraser displays great insight into this complex man and reveals a totally unexpected Cromwell, far removed from the received stereotype.

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November ... With a narrative that grips the reader like a detective story, Antonia Fraser brings the characters and events of the Gunpowder Plot to life. Dramatically recreating the conditions and motives that surrounded the fateful night of 5 November 1605, she unravels the tangled web of religion and politics that spawned the plot.'An excellent book which unravels the whole story of the plot' Literary Review'Told with impressive scholarship and panache ... with a sense of pace and tension worthy of a John le Carré novel' Sunday Telegraph

Following a youth of poverty and bitter exile after his father's execution, the ousted king first challenged, then made his magnificent escape from, Cromwell's troops before he was eventually restored to his throne in triumph in 1660.Spanning his life both before and after the Restoration, Antonia Fraser's lively and fascinating biography captures all the vitality of the man and the expansiveness of the age.

Mistresses and wives, mothers and daughters - Antonia Fraser brilliantly explores the relationships which existed between The Sun King and the women in his life. This includes not only Louis XIV's mistresses, principally Louise de La Vallière, Athénaïs de Montespan, and the puritanical Madame de Maintenon, but also the wider story of his relationships with women in general, including his mother Anne of Austria, his two sisters-in-law who were Duchesses d'Orléans in succession, Henriette-Anne and Liselotte, his wayward illegitimate daughters, and lastly Adelaide, the beloved child-wife of his grandson.

A unique testimony to modern literature's most celebrated and enduring marriage.'I first saw Harold across a crowded room, but it was lunchtime, not some enchanted evening, and we did not speak.'When Antonia Fraser met Harold Pinter she was a celebrated biographer and he was Britain's finest playwright. Both were already married - Pinter to the actress Vivien Merchant and Fraser to the politician Hugh Fraser - but their union seemed inevitable from the moment they met: 'I would have found you somehow', Pinter told Fraser. Their relationship flourished until Pinter's death on Christmas Eve 2008 and was a source of delight and inspiration to them both until the very end. Fraser uses her Diaries and her own recollections to tell a touching love story. But this is also a memoir of a partnership between two of the greatest literary talents, with fascinating glimpses into their creativity and their illustrious circle of friends from the literary, political and theatrical world.

The two-year revolution that totally changed how Britain is governed.Internationally bestselling historian Antonia Fraser's new book brilliantly evokes one year of pre-Victorian political and social history - the passing of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, an eventful and violent year that featured riots in Bristol, Manchester and Nottingham.The time-span of the book is from Wellington's intractable declaration in November 1830 that 'The beginning of reform is beginning of revolution' to 7 June 1832, when William IV reluctantly assented to the Great Reform Bill, under the double threat of the creation of 60 new peers in the House of Lords and the threat of revolution throughout the country. Wider themes of Irish and 'negro emancipation' underscore the narrative.The book is character driven; we learn of the Whig aristocrats prepared to whittle away their own power to bring liberty to the country, the all-too-conservative opposition who included the intransigent Duchess of Kent and Queen Adelaide and finally the 'revolutionaries' like William Cobbett, author of Rural Rides.These events led to a total change in the way Britain was governed, a two-year revolution that Antonia Fraser brings to vivid dramatic life.

The inspiration for the annual Pleasure of Reading PrizeA charming and revealing collection of essays from some of our best-loved writers about the pleasures of reading, with royalties donated to the Give a Book charityIn this delightful collection forty-three acclaimed writers explain what first made them interested in literature, what inspired them to read and what makes them continue to do so. Original contributors include Margaret Atwood, J. G. Ballard, Melvyn Bragg, A. S. Byatt, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Gray, Germaine Greer, Alan Hollinghurst, Doris Lessing, Candia McWilliam, Edna O’Brien, Ruth Rendell, Tom Stoppard, Sue Townsend and Jeanette Winterson, while this new edition includes essays from five new writers, Emily Berry, Kamila Shamsie, Rory Stewart, Katie Waldegrave and Tom Wells.Royalties generated from this project will go to Give a Book, www.giveabook.org.uk, a charity set up in 2011 that seeks to get books to places where they will be of particular benefit. Give a Book works in conjunction with Age UK, Prison Reading Groups, Maggie’s Centres, which help people affected by cancer, and various schools and literacy projects, such as Beanstalk, where many pupils have never had a book of their own in their lives.

The story of Catholic Emancipation begins with the violent Anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780, fuelled by the reduction in Penal Laws against the Roman Catholics harking back to the sixteenth century. Some fifty years later, the passing of the Emancipation Bill was hailed as a 'bloodless revolution'. Had the Irish Catholics been a 'millstone', as described by an English aristocrat, or were they the prime movers? While the English Catholic aristocracy and the Irish peasants and merchants approached the Catholic Question in very different ways, they manifestly shared the same objective. Antonia Fraser brings colour and humour to the vivid drama with its huge cast of characters: George III, who opposed Emancipation on the basis of the Coronation Oath; his son, the indulgent Prince of Wales, who was enamoured with the Catholic Maria Fitzherbert before the voluptuous Lady Conyngham; Wellington and the 'born Tory' Peel vying for leadership; 'roaring' Lord Winchilsea; the heroic Daniel O'Connell. Expertly written and deftly argued, THE KING AND THE CATHOLICS is also a distant mirror of our times, reflecting the political issues arising from religious intolerance.

'Ground-breaking ... One of the greatest international bestsellers of the post-war period' Andrew Roberts, Daily Telegraph'Reads like an engrossing novel' Sunday TimesAn infant queen. A teenage widow. Beautiful, flamboyant Mary Queen of Scots had a formidable intellect but her political sense - formed at the absolute court of France - plunged her country into a maelstrom of intrigue, marriage and murder. Upon fleeing to England she was held captive by her cousin Elizabeth I. In this classic biography, reissued for the fiftieth anniversary of its publication, acclaimed historian Antonia Fraser relates the enthralling story of Mary's life and untimely end.

'Before biography was fashionable, Antonia Fraser made the past popular' Guardian'As a pure storyteller, Antonia Fraser has few equals' Sunday TimesCAROLINE NORTON, a nineteenth-century heroine who wanted justice for women.Poet, pamphleteer and artist's muse, Caroline Norton dazzled 19-century society with her vivacity and intelligence. In 1836 Caroline underwent a dramatic trial when her jealous husband sued the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, for adultery. Provisions which are now taken for granted - such as the right of a mother to have access to her children - owe much to Caroline, who was determined to secure justice for women at all levels of society. Award-winning historian Antonia Fraser brilliantly portrays a woman who refused to be curbed by the personal and political constraints of her time.

From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She also had a merciless wit and talent for mimicry. She spoke French and German fluently, knew Greek and Latin, and sketched impressive portraits. As the niece of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, she was already well connected, and her courtly skills resulted in her marriage to the Hon. William Lamb (later Lord Melbourne) at the age on nineteen. For a few years they enjoyed a happy marriage, despite Lamb's siblings and mother-in-law detesting her and referring to her as 'the little beast'. In 1812 Caroline embarked on a well-publicised affair with the poet Lord Byron - he was 24, she 26. Her phrase 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' became his lasting epitaph. When he broke things off, Caroline made increasingly public attempts to reunite. Her obsession came to define much of her later life, as well as influencing her own writing - most notably the Gothic novel Glenarvon - and Byron's. Antonia Fraser's vividly compelling biography animates the life of 'a free spirit' who was far more than mad, bad and dangerous to know.