Harold Pinter's secret lover revealed as widow's homage published
When Lady Antonia Fraser began writing the books that reinvented biography as a fashionable art form, she would lock her six young children out of her study so that she could concentrate.
Forty years on, some of her children wish they had interrupted the writing of her latest work. Must you go? is a memoir devoted to her affair with and marriage to Harold Pinter, the playwright, who died of liver cancer on Christmas Eve, 2008.
The family is divided over the merits of a book that serves as a love letter to Pinter, who she ran off with while still married to the father of her children, the late Sir Hugh Fraser, a Tory MP for 40 years.
For some, the book compounds the wound of the marriage split in 1975. Pinter and Fraser married in 1980 and Sir Hugh died of lung cancer four years later.
Some of their children are said to be upset that there is scant mention of Sir Hugh and his role as their father. Their mother accuses him of suffering from "a lack of emotional intimacy".
One family member, speaking privately, said: "It is not very nice to see your father dismissed in a few lines and to go on about Pinter as this great romantic lover."
There were casualties on both sides. Pinter had previously cheated on his wife, Vivien Merchant — the actress best known for her Oscar-nominated role in the film Alfie — with Joan Bakewell, the TV presenter, and, it was revealed yesterday, Barbara Stanton, a new York socialite who had to have an abortion after becoming pregnant by him.
Merchant became so embittered at losing Pinter to Fraser that she died from acute alcoholism two years after he remarried.
The title of the book comes from the words Pinter spoke to Fraser as she was about to leave a dinner party hosted by her sister Rachel in January, 1975 after the first night of his award-winning play, the Birthday Party. Instead of going, she invited him to her home for coffee. they drank champagne and their affair started that night.
"He stayed until six o'clock in the morning with extraordinary recklessness," writes Fraser, "but of course the real recklessness was mine." the affair scandalised society, especially when other prominent figures, including Jonathan Aitken and Lord Lambton, were named as previous "escorts" of Fraser. who is a first cousin of Harriet Harman, the equalities minister and leader of the Commons.
"There had been romances," Fraser admits. "But I had never for one minute envisaged leaving my marriage."
Three months into the affair, Sir Hugh asked his wife if she was in love with another man. "Yes! I am madly in love with someone else," she said. when she told him who, he said grimly: "The best living playwright. Very suitable."
After Pinter proposed, Fraser invited him back to her marital home where Pinter drank whisky and Sir Hugh drank brandy as they discussed cricket and Proust.
Fraser, 77, was herself one of eight children of Lord Longford, the Irish peer who befriended Myra Hindley, the Moors murderer. her daughters have all followed her into writing. Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, 46, her youngest daughter, as a child pinned a note to her mother's study saying : "Nobody alowd [sic] not even you otherwise no pocket money, no conversation and worst of all no mother". she got a job with Sam Spiegel, the film producer, through Pinter's Hollywood contacts and later penned a biography of him.
She said of the new work: "I know it's a hot book and I am happy for my mother. As you can imagine, my loyalties lay with my mother."
However, her brother Orlando, 42, a barrister, is said to be devoted to the memory of his father and tried unsuccessfully to follow him into parliament by standing as Tory candidate for North Devon at the 2005 election.
A friend said: "Orlando used his groom's speech at his wedding to pay tribute to his father in front of his mother and Pinter. but I expect the family will now close in on this disagreement."
Orlando Fraser laughed when asked about the book. "I'm not going to make any comment," he said.
Harold Pinter's secret lover revealed as widow's homage published
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