My History
The theme of this memoir is purportedly the young Antonia Pakenham’s burgeoning love affair with History, capitalised as if it were a proper name, the name, perhaps of the love of Antonia’s life. For Antonia was, we learn, a terrific fan of racy historical romances such as Forever Amber during her convent days.
You will certainly learn about the eccentricities of Fraser’s personal approach to research, her Optical Research as she terms it with self-mocking grandeur – digging holes all over East Anglia in search of Boadicea [sic, in spite of modern transliteration], and shinning up Mary Queen of Scots’ tomb in Westminster Abbey (heavily pregnant and wearing a fur coat) to measure the size of the queen’s head.
The book’s true charm, though, lies in the voice of its author as she recounts a magical youth. Even in her serious moments, when writing about her conversion to Catholicism, her beloved brother Thomas’ polio or her father’s crippling depression when discharged from the army on health grounds during World War Two, her warmth and optimism bubble up like hot springs. Her friendships and romances read like a Society roll call, and she was, indeed, a deb, but a self-made one, with a flair for making her own gowns and bluffing her way into other people’s balls.
