Harold Pinter’s widow breaks silence…pauses… then is silent again

The widow of Harold Pinter today broke her silence about their marriage…paused…then resumed her narrative.

In her book, ‘Harold, must you pause?‘ Lady Antonia Fraser tells how being married to the Nobel Prize winning playwright often led to ‘pregnant pauses which I, in fact, rather welcomed since I was already the mother of six children by my first husband, Sir Hugh Fraser.’

‘Must you pause?’ were the first words Fraser spoke to Pinter after the first performance of The Birthday Party in January 1978. ‘I remember it well,’ says Fraser. ‘Harold was in full flow when he suddenly paused and shouted, ‘Down with American imperialism!’ and left me completely unsatisfied.

‘Harold,’ I said. ‘Must you pause just before the denouement?’ But, alas, as the world knows, he often did.’ ‘Harold, must you pause?‘ is published by Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 336, and is also available in Morse code.

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