Ramona Koval: You had seen him before though, hadn't you?Īntonia Fraser: Yes, I did a narration of a program about Mary Queen of Scots where his wife, the celebrated actress Vivien Merchant, enacted Mary, and there was another male actor, and I was rather pleased with it, though nervous because I'm not an actress. I can't believe that we would have met again, we would have had a chance, but the great thing is that I was bold and I said, 'No, it's not absolutely essential.' I sometimes ask myself.I think it's Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken.I don't know. What do you think might have happened if you hadn't decided to go over to Harold and say something that night?Īntonia Fraser: Well, it's one of those great questions, isn't it. There are moments in a life though, Antonia, that are quite something, aren't they. Ramona Koval: Hello again, we met in Edinburgh a couple of times when I interviewed Harold Pinter, but we'll talk about that a bit later. Antonia Fraser, welcome to The Book Show.Īntonia Fraser: Thank you very much, and hello again. He was brilliant and audacious, she was beautiful and clever, and they began an affair and then lived together and subsequently married, and after 33 years Harold Pinter died in 2008.Īntonia Fraser has just published her account of their life together, it's called Must Your Go?, and to speak about it she joins us now from her home in London. She was seen as a Catholic aristocrat with a title, he was a working class Jewish boy from the East End of London.
Harold Pinter was married to the actress Vivien Merchant who had starred in many of his early plays and they had a son. Her husband was Sir Hugh Fraser, a Conservative MP, 14 years her senior. Lady Antonia Fraser was a married woman with six children. He asked her, 'Must you go?' and she replied, 'No, it's not absolutely essential.' Thus began the long and loving relationship that caused a scandal in the mid 1970s.
She was leaving with friends but popped over to the playwright to congratulate him on his latest play. Ramona Koval: When Lady Antonia Fraser first met the British playwright Harold Pinter it was the end of an evening after a dinner party.
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