She’s a Lady! Lady Antonia Fraser
I first became a Lady in 1961.
By which I do not mean that I underwent some gender-transferral process at the time. A recent questionnaire on some official matter took me by surprise by beginning, ‘Are you still the gender you were born into?’ I was tempted to reply that I didn’t remember my birth that clearly…
In any case, the answer is yes: I was born female. And I became a Lady when my father succeeded my childless uncle to the Earldom of Longford in 1961. I was 30. Now an Earl’s daughter, I had the right to be styled Lady plus Christian name.
That was it: no more was involved. I still had the common rank of commoner. I certainly had no right to enter the House of Lords, as chatty taxi drivers have sometimes suggested. It was a courtesy title, so called, and thenceforth courteous people did – and do – address me as Lady Antonia.
There was no necessity to take it: of my three sisters, two did and one didn’t. It’s not my professional name as a writer. When I wrote Mary Queen of Scots in 1969, I was careful not to use it on book jackets in case it prejudiced Marxist reviewers against me. (I still don’t.)
There was and is, however, a necessity not to address me as Lady Fraser. That would imply the style came from my husband, the MP Sir Hugh Fraser. Similarly, my courtesy title was not affected by my husband’s own style.
When Harold Pinter and I got married in Kensington Register Office in 1980, the press attended outside. As we left, a tabloid gossip-writer cried, ‘How does it feel to be plain Mrs Pinter?’
‘She’s not,’ snapped Harold. No Pinter pause on this occasion.
The next day, the Daily Mirror thoughtfully explained the rules of the British peerage, before adding a gallant postscript: ‘Besides, Lady Antonia is not plain.’
It is obvious from all this that I warmly welcomed being a Lady. And I still do. It’s beautiful (unlike Dame, which has elements of pantomime about it). It also, for what it’s worth, gives no indication as to whether I am married or not – like the mingy, unpronounceable Ms, but much more agreeable. Come to think of it, why isn’t Lady used by everybody who wants to, in place of Ms? So much prettier.
There is no law against it.