Antonia Fraser

Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, ( Pakenham; born 27 August 1932) is a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction. She is the widow of the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter (1930–2008), and prior to his death was also known as Lady Antonia Pinter. Family background and education Fraser is the first-born of the eight children of The 7th Earl of Longford (1905–2001) and his wife, Elizabeth, Countess of Longford, née Elizabeth Harman (1906–2002). As the daughter of an earl, she is accorded the courtesy title "Lady" and thus customarily addressed formally as "Lady Antonia". As a teenager, she and her siblings converted to Catholicism, following the conversions of their parents. Her "maternal grandparents were Unitarians – a non-conformist faith with a strong emphasis on social reform". In response to criticism of her writing about Oliver Cromwell, she has said, "I have no Catholic blood". Before his own conversion in his thirties following a nervous breakdown in the Army, as she explains: "My father was Protestant Church of Ireland, and my mother was Unitarian up to the age of 20 when she abandoned it." She was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, St Mary's School, Ascot, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; the last was also her mother's alma mater. Prior to going to Oxford in 1950, she was a debutante in the London social season.