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My History: A Memoir of Growing Up

by Antonia Fraser
Doubleday. Oct. 2015. 288p. ISBN 9780385540100. $28.95; ebk. ISBN 9780385540117. LIT
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Fraser (Mary Queen of Scots; Marie Antoinette: The Journey) has loved history since first reading H.E. Marshall's Our Island Story at age four. In this memoir, she traces her early years as the eldest of eight in a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, headed by her Labor minister father, the Earl of Longford, and socialist mother. In reaction to her busy parents' early neglect, Fraser turned to reading and flights of imagination. Not taking herself too seriously, she approaches childhood visits to eccentric relatives and playing "rugger" at the Dragon School with a self-deprecating humor. She admits that parties and boys interested her more than her studies at Oxford University. Despite a reputation as a beautiful socialite married to a Tory minister, Fraser began a long, successful writing career with the best-selling biography Mary Queen of Scots.
VERDICT Readers seeking spicy tidbits about Fraser's relationship with second husband Harold Pinter will not find them here. This prequel to her autobiography, Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter, while at times bogged down in detail, will amuse and delight memoir lovers interested in upper-class British life of the mid-20th century. [See Prepub Alert, 4/27/15.]
Reviewed by Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo , Aug 01, 2015
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