portrait of the literary and dramatic scene in the late 20th century, and love

A moving memoir of one of the great 20th century love stories. Mostly derived from her diaries, Lady Antonia covers their 30 year very loving relationship. I knew that Harold Pinter was a playwright and political provocateur, but not that he was an actor, director and screenwriter as well as a loving husband and step-father. It was also enjoyable to read their encounters with other writers, actors and playwrights but ultimately it was a deeply moving love story.

I found this sharing of Ms. Fraser's life with Harold Pinter to be absolutely beautiful and moving. Her generosity in sharing such personal and private moments with her love, made me feel alive and honoured. I enjoyed the snippets from her diaries, mixed with her thoughts from the present day. A true love story.

This book reads like a sketch; a selection of rough notes made before actually sitting down and writing a book. It consists of diary jottings, but it has very little immediacy and does little to allow readers insight into what must have been a very intense emotional bond, intense enough to break up two long-term marriages. It's a disappointing book in a lot of ways, but somewhat interesting in that it helps recall fairly recent political and arts history. Mostly it seems a lot of name-dropping & talk about how wonderful, talented, popular, etc. the two of them were. There's so little offered of real emotion, it's kind of surprising she even bothered writng it, unless she was collecting notes for her future biographer.

Chosen as his Book of the Year by John Polanyi. Love story of a power couple in the world of English lit. She was married to a lord, had six children and a career writing biographies of great women, like Mary Queen of Scots. He was married too, less happily, and one of England's top playwrights. One look across a crowded room and that was it. As reviewed in the Globe this is the story of their lifelong romance and "an ever-loving memorial to his stubbon courage in art and life." For a glimpse of his powerful presence see his performance as Sir Thomas Bertram in the Patricia Rozema film version of Mansfield Park - blows you away.

Is this the most irritating and self-indulgent book in ages? Antonia Fraser gushes on about her marriage to Harold Pinter. They meet at some party and click immediately and he says "must you go?" when she leaves. The fact that she is married with family and he is married to the very talented actress Vivien Merchant is of no relevance and the way the titled lady is able to sweep aside minor impediments like the other people involved is quite gobsmacking. She sees Pinter as the genius of all time and we hear a lot about his human rights carrying on but little about the fact that he was acknowledged to be incredibly rude to common mortals. The only thing I can say is that these two self regarding Britishers really did deserve each other