![]() ![]() He would confess to her that he had never really known true love until he met her. Each had been married to their respective partners for "exactly the same period almost to the day." Eighteen years, in fact. Antonia Fraser was a bestselling historical biographer who was married to a Tory MP and the mother of six children. His marriage to Merchant (who modelled herself after beautiful but tragic Vivien Leigh) had been in crisis for a long time, and he was becoming increasingly estranged from their only son (who would change his surname). Harold Pinter's private life was then in turmoil. And that was the start of a love that lights up her affecting book - a memoir that is certainly not the complete story, but rather an essential story where (as she phrases it in her preface), "as with many love stories, the beginning and the end, the first light and the twilight, are dealt with more fully than the high noon in between." He had looked "full of energy, with black curly hair and pointed ears, like a satyr." As other guests gradually filtered away, she went over and complimented him in a single sentence about the play. She was slightly disappointed at not having been seated next to him. ![]() Her third experience of him was at a dinner party after the opening of his play The next time, she actually heard his "awesome baritone" when he boomed a vocal attack at an attendant for opening a door in the middle of a recital about Mary, Queen of Scots, at the National Portrait Gallery when his wife, actress Vivien Merchant, took the part of Mary, and Fraser (author of the bestselling history of the queen) read the narrative. ![]() He was conversing with actors Robert Shaw and Donald Pleasence, and though her companion's interest was directed at macho, red-headed Shaw, Fraser said thoughtfully: "I'll take the dark one." Antonia Fraser first saw him across a crowded room at lunchtime in London. ![]()
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