My History A Memoir of Growing Up [Paperback]

Lady Antonia Fraser—novelist, historian, daughter of progressive aristocrats, and Dame of the British Empire—first fell in love with history in 1936 at the age of five, when she received a copy of H. E. Marshall’sOur Island Storyfor Christmas. The book sparked a passion that, thirty years later, inspired her to write the acclaimed biographyMary, Queen of Scots.

In these pages, Fraser turns her biographical skills inward to capture her own remarkable life story. From her idyllic early childhood to a wartime evacuation to North Oxford; from her education at a Catholic convent to holidays spent at Dunsany Castle and Pakenham Hall; from her days working in publishing to a turf battle with her mother over who would write about the Queen of Scots,My Historyis a singular, heartfelt memoir—and a love letter to a British way of life that has all but disappeared.“Amiable and engaging. . . . As vivid and character-rich as her popular histories.”—TheWashington Post

“The history of a writer’s love affair with her vocation. . . . Elicit[s] warm fellow feeling even in readers themselves who are nothing like a dame.”—The New York Times Book Review

“ReadingMy History, I felt I was sitting at Ms. Fraser’s dinner table in London, listening to the reminiscences and anecdotes of a grande dame.”—Moira Hodgson,The Wall Street Journal
 
“A fascinating account. . . . A book that ends, as it began, in wonderland.” —The Guardian(London)

“Hugely enjoyable.” —The Times(London)

“Antonia Fraser, through both advantages of birth and strength of character, is one of those rare human beings who has managed to live a long, eventful life that has been both charmed and charming. . . .My Historywill certainly bring readers cllc3