Lady Antonia is the daughter of the late
Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, and his wife, the late
Elizabeth Harman. As the daughter of an earl, Antonia Fraser's title (form of address) is "Lady Antonia". Like all her siblings, she became a child convert to the
Catholic Church.
Lady Antonia was educated at St. Mary's Convent,
Ascot and
Dragon School, Oxford, before graduating from
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, also her mother's
alma mater.
In
1956, Lady Antonia married Scottish
Catholic aristocrat and
MP Sir Hugh Fraser (1918-1984). Sir Hugh was a
Conservative Unionist MP in the
House of Commons, sitting for
Stafford. During her marriage to him, which ended in 1977, they had three sons, Benjamin ("Benjie"), Damian, and Orlando, and three daughters, Rebecca,
Flora, and Natasha. Both Rebecca and Flora have written biographies. Benjamin works for
JPMorgan, and Natasha has completed a life of Hollywood producer
Sam Spiegel, published in 2002. Damian works for the investment banking firm
UBS AG (formerly S. G. Warburg) in
Mexico, as head of Latin American equities strategy. Orlando is a
barrister specialising in
commercial law. She has 16 grandchildren.
On
October 22, 1975, Sir Hugh and Lady Antonia, together with
Caroline Kennedy, who was visiting them at their
Holland Park home, in
Kensington, West London, were almost blown up by an
IRA car bomb placed under the wheels of his Jaguar, which had been triggered to go off at 9am when he left the house; the bomb exploded prematurely when it was examined and accidentally set off by a passerby, the respected cancer researcher Dr
Gordon Hamilton-Fairley, who was walking his dog. Hamilton-Fairley died.
In 1975, Lady Antonia met and began an affair with playwright
Harold Pinter, who was then married to the actress
Vivien Merchant, resulting in fodder for the British tabloid newspapers. In 1977, after she had been living with Pinter for two years, the Frasers' union was legally dissolved. Merchant spoke about her distress publicly to the press, which quoted her cutting remarks about Lady Antonia, but she resisted divorcing Pinter. In
1980, after Merchant signed divorce papers, Fraser and Pinter married. They still live in the Fraser family home in
Holland Park. In some social circumstances, she uses her married name "Antonia Pinter".
rss feed