Antonia Fraser

I’m at Washington airport on a book tour. My escort, an agreeable man whom I have encountered on several previous occasions, says farewell and then asks, ‘Are you still writing?’ I smile nervously. ‘A few more years left?’ he ventures, either in hope or dread, it doesn’t matter. Still. The ‘still’ word. ‘Are you still playing tennis?’ I’m not but I (still) was when I was first asked the question — in my early sixties from memory. ‘Are you still ...’ well, alive, active? It’s no good replying, ‘See for yourself’ because that’s presumably just what they haven’t been able to see. Still. Such a beautiful word.

‘History in the making can be most exhausting.’ When I first read these words — by Noël Coward — I immediately assumed they applied to the writing of it. Having just finished a long book about the loves of Louis XIV, I thought I knew all about that exhaustion. So much for solipsism. Noël Coward was actually recording in his diary for 3 September 1945 his feelings at the end of a long war with ‘the world in physical and spiritual chaos’. I read the entry in a wonderful book, The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists, edited by Irene and Alan Taylor, with multiple extracts for every day of the year — no bathroom is complete without it.

There have been many books over the years with titles that approximate to Why I Am Still a Catholic. In the Fifties a dream team would have included, I suppose, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene with Alec Guinness, received into the Church in 1956, as a promising newcomer.

The publishing world is full of romantic stories, not every one with a happy ending. (I was brought up on the tale, possibly apocryphal, that Evelyn Waugh’s brother-in-law, Edward Grant, kept a framed copy of his letter turning down Gone with the Wind in his office.) One truly happy story, however, so far without an end, is that of Alexander McCall Smith. With a day job as Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh University, he is the author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, creator of the immortal Mma Precious Ramotswe, she of the ‘traditional’ Botswana build. Published originally in hardback by the small Edinburgh firm of Polygon, the series has now sold millions worldwide, its fame spread by that surest of all methods, delighted-reader recommendation.

The word 'traitor' seems to be bandied about a good deal at present. 'So you're a traitor, then,' said the complacently smiling lady sitting next to my husband Harold Pinter at the British Library literary dinner – rather a surprising venue for such an accusation, I thought at the time. They were discussing our recent stay in Paris. Harold explained his approval of French foreign policy over the Iraq war, coupled with his disapproval of the British action. Then I was alerted by John Guare to the possibilities of www.probush.com. Clicking on the word 'Traitor' produced a rather more sinister result. This voice was male as well as soft and low. 'You're a traitor!' it hissed at me from my hitherto friendly screen. What, me? What is it with us Pinters?

A non-stop drive for housing: when my father, then Frank Pakenham, fought as Labour candidate for Oxford in 1945, he hired a pony and cart and, stuffing his numerous children in the back, set forth along the streets with this striking placard. Unfortunately, the pony came to an abrupt halt quite soon and would not be budged. The stop as opposed to the non-stop was commemorated in a photograph in the Oxford Mail. Such is the emotive power of photography that I remember it well, as Maurice Chevalier would say, including the discomfort of the crowded cart, the tiresome behaviour of my scowling siblings, my mother in the cheerful red Socialist mac she wore for electioneering (as opposed to the politically incorrect grey squirrel which was her usual wear). Ah yes, I remember it well.