Marie Antoinette: The Journey

Lady Antonia Fraser is a prolific writer and a hereditary member of British royalty. Fraser was born to the seventh Earl of Longford in 1932. She earned a degree from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. Her first husband, Sir Hugh Fraser, was a Conservative politician who founded the Conservative Philosophy Group. After their divorce, she married the famous British playwright Harold Pinter, best known for his play Betrayal (1978). Marie Antoinette: The Journey is dedicated to him.

Fraser’s best-known works are biographies of prominent historical figures, particularly British royalty. Her first major biography was Mary, Queen of Scots (1969); like Marie Antoinette, the book sought to dismantle myths about this queen of Scotland. Fraser has also written biographies of the mythological King Arthur, Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, and the six wives of King Henry VIII. In 1984, Fraser won the Wolfson History Award for her history The Weaker Vessel about women in 17th-century England. In 1999, she was named Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) for her services to literature. From 1977 to 1995, Fraser also wrote a series of detective novels about Detective Jemima Shore.

Fraser writes largely sympathetically and accessibly about her royal subjects. She does not criticize them, focusing on their positive aspects while addressing common myths about them.