Interview: Antonia Fraser, author

Published on Sunday 23 August 2009 20:12

IT was an obsession with her subject that turned Lady Antonia Fraser's biography of Mary, Queen of Scots into a bestseller, she tells Lee Randall

SCHOLARSHIP, erudition and elegance of writing are all part of the package, but if you asked me to pinpoint what makes Lady Antonia Fraser's biographies so absorbing and interesting, I'd say the answer boils down to one key fact: it's because she is so interested in the world.

Reviewing a transcript of our too-short hour together at her home in Holland Park, I see endless square brackets encasing notes to myself to explain away the gaps: (we digress about Ian Rankin, "amusing, nice, and a wonderful writer"]; (we digress about Greer Garson's silly costume in Pride and Prejudice and Olivier's swoon-inducing moves as Darcy]; (we digress at length about a novel dissecting JFK's sexual peccadilloes]; (we digress about the concept of Jewish atheism and how it describes not only myself, but her late husband, Harold Pinter].

The catalyst for our conversation is Fraser's appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where she will celebrate the 40th anniversary of her first bestseller, Mary Queen of Scots, by giving a new lecture about the woman whose tragic story has held her rapt ever since she was a girl. ("It's rather pathetic now, seeing my original lecture," she says. "As a personal letter it's somewhat out of date.")

Thanks to her attention to pacing, Fraser's books are riveting reads, and I discover that I'm not the first to tell her that for one mad moment, while reading Marie Antoinette, I dared hope the queen could escape. Similarly, I was half tempted to believe that Elizabeth Tudor would soften and release her cousin from gaol.

This ability to render the past so vividly that one becomes engrossed enough to forget known facts is surely a hallmark of quality – yet back in 1969, everyone predicted Mary Queen of Scots would bomb, because narrative history had fallen out of fashion.

"That's absolutely true. I kept being told that it was all movements and trends, and Marxist historians and all of that. But as I've often said, the thing about narrative biography is nobody liked it but the public." She chuckles.

The enduring appeal of a good story well told, I suggest. "Yes and no. In another sense, even though somebody knows perfectly well Henry VIII is going to marry six times, because they can read the title, it shouldn't feel ordained; it should be told as a story. That's the ideal, anyway. Somebody paid me a tremendous compliment, saying that when they were reading the chapter in Marie Antoinette at Varennes (where the escaping royal couple were captured in 1791], they thought they were going to get away. I wrote it that way, because that's what they thought; they thought they were free. Louis XVI was relaxing and making coarse jokes."

She was stunned by the response to Mary Queen of Scots, and not only because of the doomsayers. "Sometimes you're really lucky that, by doing what you really want to do, you hit a nerve and you didn't expect it. All I was thinking was, 'How can I recreate this amazing woman? How can I fulfil my dream of writing about her?' I wasn't thinking about other people and what they wanted."

Given that, is it essential that a biographer love their subject? "I've often considered and disputed that. One of the biographies I really admired was Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler. And to say to write about Hitler you have got to be a little in love with him – well, no-one wants to read David Irving's biography!" She chuckles, then says: "It's a bit dangerous, because you're getting towards self-identification, which means that women can only write about women, and men can only write about men."

She has knocked that kind of foolishness on the head several times over, I say. "Yes, I'm very lucky, because when people start down that road I say, yes, and of course there was that well-known woman Oliver Cromwell … To write biography you do need to be passionate. Obsessed is another good word. On the other hand, you can say love because when one is in love with someone they're not blind to their faults."

Fraser has written concept biographies, including The Gunpowder Plot, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Love and Louis XIV. "In history there are many mansions. Unless you get the individual lives right, how are you going to build a history? Somebody famously said there's no history, only biography. And I don't agree with that either. The mosaic of the lives, the individuals, it's essential to get it right."

I read her a quote from Barbara Becker: "Lives are mosaics fashioned out of numerous incremental day-to-day decisions and happenstance, what historian Pamela Smith has referred to as the 'noise' of a life."

"I agree. My friend Roy Strong, whom I admire very much, tells a story about me meeting him at the desk at the London Library. We were both returning books and I said, 'Oh, Roy, I'm so pleased to see you. When Henry VIII made love, did he go to her or did she go to him?' He said it was a question he'd never asked himself, but I thought it was rather important. I wasn't really thinking what effect this kind of question might have on the people behind the desk. I was just thinking practically."

Having written about Mary Stuart and Henry Tudor, Fraser is now, almost inevitably, at work on a biography of Elizabeth I. Was it a case of making good use of leftover research?

"No! After all, it's taken me 40 years to do. I wanted to take a look at it because I was accused of being unfair to Elizabeth – and what was the unfairness? Well, I seem to think Mary Stuart was justified in trying to escape. I thought it was rather odd to expect her to sit, unlawfully detained, saying, 'I'm so pleased to be able to be your prisoner.'"

But why is it, I wonder, that certain people find their lives are endlessly examined, while so many other worthy stories remain untold? I'm thinking not just of these kings and queens, but also JFK and Marilyn Monroe, to name more contemporary examples.

"In one sense it's every generation, though it's actually much quicker than a generation. If you take the notion that the mood of the world changes, then I think people want to look at these sort of mythic people again."

And if, for example, she was looking at Mary Stuart a generation later, she admits, she'd consider her religious life more fully and with more nuance. "Not that I think I got it wrong, but I think I now know so much about the 16th century, and I realised our notions of Catholics and Protestants, that you're one or another, leave out of account that a lot of people changed all the time, as the rulers changed. They had to. But I wouldn't want to do it again unless I felt the same passion."

Another decision she might revisit, given half a chance, is one she made as a Booker judge. We get talking (yes, another digression) about the recent biography of novelist Elizabeth Taylor and she reveals: "I feel such guilt. I was twice a Booker judge: the first year I judged was the second year of the Booker and we were split between Elizabeth Taylor's Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont and Bernice Rubens's The Elected Member. I voted for Rubens and very soon I wished I'd voted for Taylor. I didn't know a lot about psychology and was told afterwards that I'd given Rubens credit for others' ideas. It was a good book, I didn't think it unworthy; it was just that I felt Taylor was more worthy."

Fraser is not joking when she insists it was a condition of her attendance at the Book Festival that a dinner be organised with Ian Rankin, but I suspect she'd have come regardless. Edinburgh is where it all began.

"The first time I did research other than in the British Library, was in Edinburgh. I had a degree in history but I was very green about it all, and I received wonderful assistance from the keeper of the registrar, Sir James Ferguson, who was so courteous to me. It was the first time I looked at original documents. I spent a lot of time in Edinburgh because we lived in the Highlands during my first marriage and, coming or going, you always stop in Edinburgh. So I have a lot of affection for it."

Would she, I wonder, enjoy being the subject of a biography? Sculpted eyebrows shoot up and she looks outraged. "No! I can always write my own. I certainly would not permit anyone else to do it – what's wrong with me? If I wish my life to be recorded then I'll do it myself."

Rumour has it something of the sort is in the pipeline. Fingers crossed.

&#149 Lady Antonia Fraser is at the Book Festival on 31 August at 11:30am in the RBS Main Theatre.