The sofa in Antonia Fraser’s sitting room is a crowded space. A cat named Ferdinand, one half of a pair clearly named by the 84-year-old historian (the other, Isabella, is licking her paw over by the window), must be displaced before I can sit down. There are less tangible presences, too: Margaret Thatcher once sat in this very spot, Fraser informs me as I settle down into the cushions.
A decade after the Iron Lady attended a meeting of the Conservative Philosophy Group at Fraser’s house in Holland Park, London (her first husband, Hugh Fraser, was a Tory MP), a different kind of gathering was held in this room. On 20 June 1988, the first meeting of what came to be known as “the June 20 Group” took place. As many as 25 prominent novelists and thinkers, including Germaine Greer, Salman Rushdie, David Hare, John Mortimer, Melvyn Bragg, Margaret Drabble and Peter Nichols, as well as Fraser and her second husband, Harold Pinter, were present.
Content from our partners
