Family Plots

Flora, the blooming Fraser

This is a story about Flora and Fawners. Flora Fraser, pretty, intelligent, twenty-eight, is the latest of a famous family of politicians and biographers. Hence, perhaps, her many Fawners among London's literary party goers. Her grandfather is Lord Longford. Her grandmother is royal biographer Elizabeth Longford. Her father was government minister Sir Hugh Fraser. Her mother is the biographer Lady Antonia Fraser (now married, as all her Fawners know, to playwright Harold Pinter). And her sister Rebecca has just completed a biography of Charlotte Bronte.

With that sort of tradition, it's not surprising what career Flora has chosen. This month Knopf is publishing her biography, Emma, Lady Hamilton—the life story of the extraordinary woman whose last lover, Admiral Lord Nelson, bequeathed her in his will to the British nation, like some precious work of art.

Emma began her career in a London brothel (or "nunnery," as they were known, in a quaint euphemism). But, says Flora, "she was an adorable character. A previous lover passed her on to her husband-to-be with the words 'A cleanlier, sweeter bedfellow does not exist.' " So Emma obviously had her Fawners too.

Peter Hillmore