Writing Career

Flora Fraser

CURRENTLY

Flora is delighted to be publishing Pretty Young Rebel with Bloomsbury in the UK and with Knopf in the US. Her long-time editor at Knopf, Robert Gottlieb, has said, “Like her mother, Antonia Fraser, and her grandmother Elizabeth Longford, with whom I also worked, Flora is an indefatigable worker, and chapters flash back and forth between us. Then comes the fun of illustrations!”

Flora was appointed the Mount Vernon Georgian Papers Fellow for 2017 and undertook research among those Papers in the Royal Archives and in the Washington Library at Mount Vernon and elsewhere in the US for Pretty Young Rebel.

King’s College, London, honoured Flora in 2019 with a Doctorate of Letters, honoris causa.

Flora was also elected, in 2020, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

PREVIOUS BOOKS

The Washingtons: George and Martha: ‘Join’d by Friendship, Crown’d by Love’ (Knopf, 2015), published in the UK as George & Martha Washington: A Revolutionary Marriage (Bloomsbury, 2015), is now available as a paperback in both countries.

Flora was the winner of the George Washington Book Prize 2016 in the US for ‘The Washingtons’. She was also longlisted for the Library of Virginia Non-Fiction 2016 Prize.

Flora has also published the following historical biographies:

  • Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte (Knopf, US; John Murray, UK, 2009)
  • Princesses: The Daughters of George III (Knopf, US; John Murray, 2004)
  • The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline (Knopf, US; Macmillan, 1996)
  • Beloved Emma: The Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton (Knopf, US; Weidenfeld, 1986)

OTHER BOOKS

  • Tamgar (Weidenfeld, 1990)
  • The English Gentlewoman (Barrie & Jenkins, 1987)
  • Maud: The Diaries of Maud Berkeley, adapted by Flora Fraser (Secker & Warburg, 1985)
  • Double Portrait (Fontana, 1983)

CONTRIBUTIONS

  • Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford. With an Introduction by Flora Fraser (Vintage, US, 2011)
  • Ann Veronica, by H.G. Wells. With an Introduction by Flora Fraser (Orion, UK, 2011)
  • The Enchantress, Emma, Lady Hamilton: The Jean Kislak Collection, ed. Arthur
  • Dunkelman (Grolier, US, 2011)
  • The Wisdom of George III, ed. Jonathan Marsden (Royal Collection, 2006)
  • The Nelson Companion, ed. Colin White (Sutton, 1995)
  • Winning Tales from Scottish Houses (Canongate, 1986)

APPRENTICESHIP

Flora Fraser grew up in London and Scotland, and studied classics at Oxford University before becoming a professional writer. During her teens and twenties Flora was employed as a researcher by a number of authors including the late ancient historian Michael Grant, and her grandmother Elizabeth Longford and mother, Antonia Fraser, both historical biographers. This apprenticeship included work on her grandmother’s Eminent Victorian Women (Weidenfeld, 1981) and on her mother’s, Scottish Love Poems: A Personal Anthology (Canongate, 1975) and The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in 17th Century England (Weidenfeld, UK, 1984).

FURTHER

Flora served, as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1999, for ten years.

She co-founded, with Peter Soros, in 2002 the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, commemorating her grandmother, which she chairs.

Flora has been, since 2011, on the Wadham College, Oxford, Development Council.

From 2014 to 2022, she was a judge for the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History at the New-York Historical Society, formerly the Guggenheim Lehrman Prize in Military History.

Flora lives in London, is a member of the Athenaeum Club, and enjoys reading, and swimming in Greece.