Antonia Fraser: I was once told, ‘You write like a man.’ I took it as a compliment

The author of bestselling historical biographies, including one about Marie Antoinette that was turned into the film by Sofia Coppola, talks to Charlotte Cripps about life with Harold Pinter, how she dealt with the grief of losing him, and her new book, ‘The Case of the Married Woman’

Antonia Fraser, 88, who was married to Harold Pinter, writes bestsellers from her house in London’s Holland Park (Getty Images)

Being a young woman, with my white mini skirt and false blonde hair, seemed rather an advantage when I wrote Mary, Queen of Scots,” says 88-year-old Antonia Fraser, the historian and widow of Harold Pinter, talking candidly about her first bestseller in 1969. But it wasn’t always so rosy for her as a female writer.

When Fraser wrote her next book, a biography of Oliver Cromwell, in 1973, she received one particularly presumptuous review. “It said, ‘What does this nice middle-class woman know about the torments of Oliver Cromwell?’” recalls Fraser. “I replied in a lecture that I was not middle-class or nice. But the remark, ‘What is a woman doing writing about Cromwell?’ I mean, I didn’t pay any attention.” Fraser, who is softly spoken and endearing, is talking to me from her drawing room in London’s Holland Park about inequality – the subject of her new book, The Case of the Married Woman. “The other side,” she continues, “was a great friend of mine, also a writer and historian, saying, ‘You know, you write like a man,’ and I realised it was a great compliment. Nowadays it would be seen as sexist, but then I’d never even heard of the word.”

Fraser might come from aristocratic lineage – she grew up in Oxford and was the eldest child of the Earl of Longford and his historian wife, Elizabeth – but there is nothing haughty about her. Dressed in a purple dress and a jacket adorned with purple flowers, she offers me tea and chocolate biscuits – brought by her housekeeper, who has been pushing a carpet sweeper up and down the hallway.