This is something I started wondering about on the bus ride home. I'm currently reading, and greatly enjoying, My History: a memoir of growing up, by historian and mystery writer Antonia Fraser (a.k.a. Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham), who mentions that she is the niece (by marriage) of Christine Longford (a.k.a Christine, Countess of Longford), who wrote Making Conversation, one of the Persephones on my someday list. And, as it turns out. she's the mother of Flora Fraser, who wrote a book about the daughters of George III that I bought (but haven't read yet) after I read this one, and the new book about George and Martha Washington that I just brought home from the library and hope I'll have time to read next. And then there's Elizabeth, Antonia's mother, who became Countess of Longford when her husband and Antonia's father and Flora's grandfather Francis Aungier Pakenham became the 7th Earl of Longford upon the death of his brother Edward, husband of Christine. As Elizabeth Longford, she wrote biographies and a memoir, The Pebbled Shore, which I've now also put on my list after meeting her in her daughter's book. This is the kind of thing I love: when my books are related. :)
The act of reading ... begins on a flat surface, counter or page, and then gets stirred and chopped and blended until what we make, in the end, is a dish, or story, all our own.
— Adam Gopnik
— Adam Gopnik
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
November 5, 2015
Only connect: Antonia Fraser and Christine Longford and Flora Fraser and Elizabeth Longford
This is something I started wondering about on the bus ride home. I'm currently reading, and greatly enjoying, My History: a memoir of growing up, by historian and mystery writer Antonia Fraser (a.k.a. Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham), who mentions that she is the niece (by marriage) of Christine Longford (a.k.a Christine, Countess of Longford), who wrote Making Conversation, one of the Persephones on my someday list. And, as it turns out. she's the mother of Flora Fraser, who wrote a book about the daughters of George III that I bought (but haven't read yet) after I read this one, and the new book about George and Martha Washington that I just brought home from the library and hope I'll have time to read next. And then there's Elizabeth, Antonia's mother, who became Countess of Longford when her husband and Antonia's father and Flora's grandfather Francis Aungier Pakenham became the 7th Earl of Longford upon the death of his brother Edward, husband of Christine. As Elizabeth Longford, she wrote biographies and a memoir, The Pebbled Shore, which I've now also put on my list after meeting her in her daughter's book. This is the kind of thing I love: when my books are related. :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thank you for visiting!
Card Catalog
#6barsets
#emma200th
#maisie
#Middlemarchin2019
#PalliserParty
#Woolfalong
A.A. Milne
Agatha Christie
Alexander McCall Smith
Allison Pearson
Amy Lowell
Angela Thirkell
Ann Bridge
Anne Perry
Anthony Trollope
Anticipation
Armchair Travels
Art
Audiobooks
Barbara Pym
Biography
Bloomsbury
Bookish things
Boston
British Library Crime Classics
Cambridge
Cathleen Schine
Charles Dickens
Coffee-table books
Cookbooks
D.E. Stevenson
Deborah Crombie
Donna Leon
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Whipple
E.H. Young
E.M. Delafield
E.M. Forster
Edith Wharton
Elinor Lipman
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Jenkins
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth von Arnim
Ellizabeth Taylor
Emily Dickinson
Ernest Hemingway
Essays
Eudora Welty
Fanny Burney
Fiction
Films
Food from Books
Food Writing
Found on a Blog
George Eliot
Georgette Heyer
Gertrude Stein
Helen Ashton
Henry James
History
Homes and Haunts
Ideas
Imogen Robertson
Isabella Stewart Gardner
Jacqueline Winspear
Jane Austen
Joanna Trollope
Julia Child
Language
Laurie Colwin
Letters
Library Books
Literature
Louise Andrews Kent
Louise Penny
M.F.K. Fisher
Madame Bovary
Madame de Sévigné
Madame de Staël
Margaret Kennedy
Margery Sharp
Martha Grimes
Mary Shelley
Memoirs
Miss Read
My Year with Edith
Mysteries
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nonfiction
Nook
Only Connect
P.D. James
Paris in July
Persephones
Plays
Poetry
Pride and Prejudice 200
Queen Victoria
R.I.P.
Reading England 2015
Ruth Rendell
Sarah Orne Jewett
Short Stories
Susan Hill
Switzerland
Sylvia Beach
Team Middlemarch
The 1924 Club
The Brontës
the Carlyles
The Classics Club
Thomas Hardy
Virago
Virginia Woolf
Washington Irving
Willa Cather
William Maxwell
Winifred Peck
Winifred Watson
4 comments:
You've just added at least four books to my reading list!
My TBR list grew enormously when I read this! I'm still most eager to read The Pebbled Shore, because Elizabeth Longford sounds quite marvellous and fascinating. I borrowed it from the library months ago but never got around to reading it - one day! Also, in last week's Financial Times there was a review of a book (The Company of Trees) by Antonia Fraser's brother, Thomas Pakenham. And Rachel Billington, author of one of the worst Austen sequels ever written (Perfect Happiness) is another of Antonia's siblings. They are an inescapable family!
She does, doesn't she? And Antonia's 'Irish twin' Thomas and little sister Rachel {they're all still children in the memoir so far}also turned out to writers? I've heard of Rachel Billington but didn't know about the connection (or the awful book, which I am of course now tempted to read...) Thanks for introducing me to all of them, Claire!
Gosh I didn't know of all those connections. I'd quite like to read My History, I heard Fraser talking on the radio about it, thanks for the reminder.
Post a Comment