SOURCE: "Antonia Fraser: The Lady as a Writer," in New York Times Magazine, September 9, 1984, pp. 60-62, 75-78.

The following essay provides a portrait of Fraser's personal life as background to her work.

Antonia Fraser lives on a quiet, tree-shaded square in the Kensington section of London in a large, airy house that she shares with her second husband, the playwright Harold Pinter. With them live the four youngest of her six children by her first marriage, to the late Sir Hugh Fraser. Sitting in her garden on a recent afternoon, Lady Antonia looked softly feminine, a portrait of gentility. A large white picture hat shielded her face from the sun. A wasp buzzed her ear, and she seemed unperturbed. "I prefer to believe that nature's on my side," she said, "but Harold gets worried," and she indicated, high overhead, his response to nature's sting—an electric bug catcher...