Antonia Fraser is a Funny Lady...

Biographer Antonia Fraser felt the need to respond to an item printed about her in the British tabloid Tatler. I hope you enjoy her explanations as much as I did, especially the one about Jane Seymour!

Tatler got it wrong about me and Marie Antoinette

I do not read Tatler. So it was left to my 13-year-old granddaughter to inform me that I had been placed at No 7 on Tatler's list of "most-invited" people. But I should like to clear something up which might otherwise lead to a period of social stagnation. I do not, as Tatler and Gold claimed, mourn Marie Antoinette for the whole of the first half of October: only on 16 October, the date of her execution. This year I shall be in deepest black, incidentally, at the Cheltenham festival, preparing to talk about Mary Queen of Scots. I mourn her on 8 February.

At least Oliver Cromwell was ritually executed after his death so there's no need for precise mourning. On the other hand, as his biographer, I feel I must pay tribute to him – after all, I have profited from him, as it were, so why should I not make some gesture of respect? The answer with Cromwell is 3 September: the day on which he died in 1658, but also termed by him his "most fortunate day". He won both the battles of Dunbar and Worcester on that date, and in my unsubstantiated opinion, delayed his death to fit in. The anniversary has been taken over by the second world war, so one could sneak into the Churchill Museum incarnating the war cabinet rooms and have a quick pious reflection.

Now to Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, among other decapitated women I have written about and annually commemorate: to save time, I suggest a day-long tour of the six tombs of the six wives of Henry VIII. You begin with the Tower of London for Boleyn and Katherine, first cousins and, respectively, second and fifth wives. On to St George's Chapel where poor old Jane Seymour lies beneath Henry VIII himself: we shall spare a thought for that predicament. On again to Sudeley Castle, near Cheltenham, where lies Catherine Parr. A swerve east to Peterborough and the marvellous tomb of Catherine of Aragon (although her age at death is given wrong). Lastly Westminster Abbey and the tomb of the fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, adjacent to the high altar.

Readers may feel that this is all mourning too far. But I repeat: since I have in a sense been lucky enough to benefit from the lives and deaths of these people, why should I not remember them? Otherwise it's a hard life, with only the parties to cheer one up.