A unique testimony to modern literature’s most celebrated and enduring marriage.
‘I first saw Harold across a crowded room, but it was lunchtime, not some enchanted evening, and we did not speak.’
When Antonia Fraser met Harold Pinter she was a celebrated biographer and he was Britain’s finest playwright. Both were already married – Pinter to the actress Vivien Merchant and Fraser to the politician Hugh Fraser – but their union seemed inevitable from the moment they met: ‘I would have found you somehow’, Pinter told Fraser. Their relationship flourished until Pinter’s death on Christmas Eve 2008 and was a source of delight and inspiration to them both until the very end.
Fraser uses her Diaries and her own recollections to tell a touching love story. But this is also a memoir of a partnership between two of the greatest literary talents, with fascinating glimpses into their creativity and their illustrious circle of friends from the literary, political and theatrical world.
‘I first saw Harold across a crowded room, but it was lunchtime, not some enchanted evening, and we did not speak.’
When Antonia Fraser met Harold Pinter she was a celebrated biographer and he was Britain’s finest playwright. Both were already married – Pinter to the actress Vivien Merchant and Fraser to the politician Hugh Fraser – but their union seemed inevitable from the moment they met: ‘I would have found you somehow’, Pinter told Fraser. Their relationship flourished until Pinter’s death on Christmas Eve 2008 and was a source of delight and inspiration to them both until the very end.
Fraser uses her Diaries and her own recollections to tell a touching love story. But this is also a memoir of a partnership between two of the greatest literary talents, with fascinating glimpses into their creativity and their illustrious circle of friends from the literary, political and theatrical world.
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Reviews
Combining disarming emotional frankness with restrained elegance, Antonia Fraser weaves her diary entries and memories into a compelling and moving history of a long, passionate relationship.
Brave but often funny in its account of a scandal that became a destiny, it teaches modern lovers a lesson that many will need to learn: how to say the long goodbye.
An uplifting, warm and moving tribute
The quiet brilliance of this book steals up on you... it's funny, clever and controlled... there is so much generosity here and so much love that by the final page, in a London hospital on Christmas Eve 2008, I was in tears.
A wonderful tour of the world's top tables...the charm of this book lies in the powerful love between her and Pinter...Her account of Pinter's last days, roaring like a lion in the face of death, are deeply moving.