Antonia Fraser

Abstract

Antonia Fraser was born in 1932, the eldest of eight children of Frank and Elizabeth Pakenham. She was brought up in North Oxford (her father was a don at Christ Church) but in her youth both her parents were aspirant politicians, standing in turn as Labour candidate for Oxford. She went to the Dragon School, Oxford, in 1940–44, and after her mother joined her father as a convert in the Catholic Church she left her Anglican boarding school for St Mary’s Convent, Ascot, in 1946–48. She went to Oxford University in 1950–53, reading History. She then worked as an editor for the publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson until her first marriage in 1956 to the Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser; they had six children. She has been President of the English Centre of PEN and Chairman of the Society of Authors. In 1999 Antonia Fraser received the CBE and in 2000 was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal of the Historical Association.