Cromwell granted her Anglo-Irish forebears land in West Meath in the heart of Ireland.
Then came Puritan ruler Oliver Cromwell and Charles II, the Restoration King.Įach famous subject, perhaps not coincidentally, had a personal tie to her family. She gained her place as a major historian and writer in 1969 with her definitive biography of Mary, Queen of Scots, a best seller in eight languages. Last month Americans tuned to a highbrow quiz program on National Public Radio could hear Lady Antonia deftly identify an arcane quotation: "It's Milton - Lycidas." The result: 23 volumes.Īll the while she was ubiquitous on the TV-radio "chat show" circuit, bright and quippy for Call My Bluff, articulate and opinionated on the weighty Question Time. Her typewriter never cooled down, even after she married Hugh Fraser, a Conservative Member of Parliament, and produced three sons and three daughters. But even as swains queued eagerly for her attention, "all of the time there was a more profound, intellectual side."Īt 22 she published her first book, on the mythical King Arthur. "She was already a bit of a star at Oxford," says her father. The genesis, perhaps, of her view of woman-as-equal.Īs a student at Oxford, Antonia Pakenham (the family name) was the centerpiece of an oh, so uppah-crusty circle. Young Antonia was fiercely competitive, on the tennis courts with her brother Thomas and on the football team at a boys school that admitted a handful of girls on equal footing. Frank and I called her the wonder child." Which is not to say she was candy-coated.
She could read before she had any idea of the meaning of the words. Her mother recalls that this precocious firstborn "always wrote, even before she could write - poems, little stories. The brightest star in the family firmament is Antonia.
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