Must You Go?: My Life with Harold Pinter - Hardcover

Fraser, Lady Antonia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297859714 ISBN 13: 9780297859710

Publisher: W&N, 2010

Synopsis

The subtitle of this wonderful memoir declares its contents: this is 'my life with Harold Pinter', not Lady Antonia Fraser's complete life, and certainly not his. In essence, it is a love story and 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. The result is a marvellously insightful testimony to modern literature's most celebrated marriage, between the greatest playwright of the age and a beautiful and famous prize-winning biographer.

Must You Go? is based partly on Antonia Fraser's own diaries, which she has kept since October 1968 when she suffered from withdrawal symptoms after finishing her first historical biography, Mary Queen of Scots. Antonia Fraser has also used her own recollections, both immediate reactions (she always writes her Diary the next morning, unless otherwise noted) and memories. She has quoted Pinter where he told her things about his past, once again noting the source, and has occasionally quoted his friends talking to her on the same subject. Intriguingly her Diaries always pay special attention to any green shoots where Pinter's writing is concerned, perhaps a consequence of a biographer living with a creative artist and observing the process first hand.

Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser lived together from August 1975 until his death thirty-three years later on Christmas Eve 2008. 'O! call back yesterday, bid time return,' cries one of his courtiers to Richard II. This is Antonia Fraser's uniquely compelling way of doing so

About this title

Review

Antonia Fraser's poignant memoir Must You Go? begins in 1975 when, aged 42, she meets the playwright with 'bright black eyes' at a dinner party, sparking a 33-year love affair (HARPER'S BAZAAR)

Antonia Fraser writes a moving portrait of her relationship with late husband Harold Pinter (VOGUE)

But the book is in the end not so much a literary memoir as the simplest of love stories. As such, it's captivating (David Sexton EVENING STANDARD)

As the memoir, Must You Go?, movingly proves, Pinter's love of women finally reached fulfilment in a marriage of true minds (Michael Billington WATERSTONES BOOKS QUARTERLY)

It is neither authobiography nor biography but a love story, romantic, poignant and very funny, illuminating her husband's character and creativity (Valerie Grove THE TIMES)

Antonia Fraser's memoir of her life with Harold Pinter, Must You Go?, is extraordinary by any standards. Based on the diaries she kept during her 33-year relationship with the dramatist, it is simultaneously a love story, an intimate portrait of a great writer and an exercise in self-revelation (Michael Billington THE GUARDIAN)

This book - full of funny and tender things - satisfies on more than one level. It is an intimate account of the life and habits of a major artist; it is a pencil sketch of British high society in the second half of the 20th century; and it is, more than either of these things, and much more unusually, a wonderfully full description of the deep pleasures and comforts of married love (Sam Leith SPECTATOR)

Addictive and affecting as an account of a 33-year-old love affair, with walk-on parts for Vaclav Havel, Salman Rushdie, The Princess of Wales and many others, it is memorable for its intimate vignettes (James Fergusson COUNTRY LIFE)

After 33 years, he [Pinter] remained as besotted with Antonia Fraser as he had always been. He would write her poems, send her flowers, buy her presents...Here, astonishingly, was the Mr Darcy of Campden Hill Square: forbidding and combustible on the outside, gentle and tender at home (James Preston EVENING STANDARD)

Pinter's first diagnosis with cancer of the oesophagus came on 13 December 2001, soon after that public "Fall" of 11 September. Fraser traces the "steps downwards" through the eight ensuing years of sporadic anguish and relief with exemplary clarity and courage....Fraser keeps her gaze steady and her heart open (Boyd Tonkin THE INDEPENDENT)

Book Description

A unique testimony to modern literature's most celebrated and enduring marriage.

About this edition

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0297859714
• ISBN 13: 9780297859710
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336