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Rugger, Robin Hood and Rupert of the Rhine: enthusiasms of the young Antonia Fraser

Cressida Connolly’s reckons that to be alone in a room reading Antonia Fraser’s My History is the perfect way to start the new year

10 January 2015

9:00 AM

10 January 2015

9:00 AM

My History: A Memoir of Growing Up Antonia Fraser

Weidenfeld, pp.303, £20, ISBN: 9780297871903

Despite it being a well known fact that Antonia Fraser had earthly parents, I had always imagined that she had somehow skipped infancy and emerged instead from a celestial cloud, surrounded by hordes of trumpet-wielding cherubim, a fully-formed Venus in pink and gold and white. Turreted castles, a constant shower of sovereigns, a title, a jewelry box whose contents might have made Liz Taylor wince: this was the milieu suggested by her tremendous beauty and mysterious half-smile.

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