Word: antonia
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...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. 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...
Some of the royal genes crop out now and then. Author Michael Holroyd, clearly a partisan, portrays Antonia entering a crowded room: "There's a stateliness about her. It's almost like a member of the royal family; people feel they should make a little bow. Some people are dazzled, some feel overawed. She can intimidate some and charm others. It's chemistry -- and possibly height. But as soon as she laughs, the formality is completely dissolved." Adds playwright Arthur Miller, a frequent guest of the Pinters: "She has great elegance as a writer and as a person." Marigold Johnson...
Through it all, her staunchly Catholic family stood by her. Says Lady Longford: "From the word go, Antonia wanted a literary life. Her first husband was a Conservative M.P. I could see that wasn't really the kind of life she was meant for. What she is doing now with Harold and on her own perfectly fits in with everything...
...change of pace and a piece of change, the prolific Antonia takes breaks between works of history, which eat up three to four years, to write mystery stories featuring female detective Jemima Shore, who has made the leap to TV. But when she first joined the Crime Writers' Association, she was snubbed. "This glittering butterfly was too much for them," says an observer. Eventually, her seriousness won them over and -- what else? -- she became chairman...
...divisive effects of her policies that make it increasingly difficult for the really poor, who are very often hopeless." When Fraser expressed these concerns, she sparked charges that she was a "chateau-bottled socialist" who has prospered under the Thatcherism she deplores. In rebuttal, championing the independence of writers, Antonia snaps, "In France they would have given me a medal." She readily acknowledges that personal attacks sting. "Yes. Absolutely. Fair criticism is hurtful; unfair criticism is doubly hurtful." But Lady Antonia is past her Perfect Woman stage. That ended in 1975, when Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter discovered each other...