Frances Stonor Saunders
Frances Hélène Jeanne Stonor Saunders FRSL (born 14 April 1966) is a British journalist and historian.
Early life
[edit]Frances Stonor Saunders is the daughter of Julia Camoys Stonor and Donald Robin Slomnicki Saunders. Her father, who died in 1997, was a Jewish refuge from Bucharest, Romania, born to a British national with Polish and Russian ancestry.[1][2] Jews named Slomnicki died in the Belzec extermination camp; the fate of two great-aunts Saunders was unable to determine. Her parents divorced when Saunders was eight.[3]
Saunders attended St Mary's School Ascot, where she was head girl.[4]
Career
[edit]A few years after graduating (in 1987)[5] with a first-class honours degree in English from University of Oxford (having studied at St Anne's College),[6] Saunders embarked on a career as a television film-maker. Hidden Hands: A Different History of Modernism, made for Channel 4 in 1995, discussed the connection between American art critics and Abstract Expressionist painters with the CIA.[7] Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War (1999) (in the USA: The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters), her first book, was developed from her work on the documentary, concentrating on the history of the covertly CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom. The book won the Royal Historical Society's William Gladstone Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.[8] It has since been published in fifteen languages.[8] Saunders' other works reflect her academic background as a medievalist.
In 2005, after some years as the arts editor and associate editor of the New Statesman, Saunders resigned in protest over the sacking of Peter Wilby, the then-editor. In 2004[9] and 2005[10] for Radio 3, she presented Meetings of Minds, two three-part series on the meetings of intellectuals at significant points in history. She is also a regular contributor to Radio 3's Nightwaves and other radio programmes.
Her second book, Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman (in the US: The Devil's Broker), recounts the life and career of John Hawkwood, a condottiere of the 14th century.[5] English-born, Hawkwood (1320–1394) made a notorious career as a participant in the confused and treacherous power politics of the Papacy, France, and Italy. The Woman Who Shot Mussolini (2010) is a biography of Violet Gibson,[11] the Anglo-Irish aristocrat who shot Benito Mussolini in 1926, wounding him slightly.
Of Saunders' book, The Suitcase: Six Attempts to Cross a Border, Elisa Segrave wrote in The Spectator: "This is a complex, occasionally frustrating book with fascinating historical nuggets." The author "certainly brings home the anguish of war. She also examines memory, its importance and its unpredictability."[3] James McConnachie wrote in The Sunday Times: "As for that suitcase, it would be unfair to say more. I’ll only warn that the payoff isn’t a Hollywood explosion. It is more an arthouse twist — but one that, like this book, will haunt you."[1] Saunders was awarded the PEN Ackerley Prize for outstanding memoir and autobiography for The Suitcase: Six Attempts to Cross a Border in July 2022.[12]
Saunders was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.[8] She lives in London.
Works
[edit]Articles
[edit]- "Modern art was CIA 'weapon'." The Independent (Jun. 14, 2013) (orig. 22 Oct. 1995).
- "The Writer and the Valet." London Review of Books, vol. 36, no. 18 (Sep. 25, 2014).
- "Stuck on the Flypaper: Frances Stonor Saunders on MI5 and the Hobsbawm File." London Review of Books, vol. 37, no. 7 (Apr. 9, 2015).
- "Where on Earth Are You?" London Review of Books, vol. 38, no. 5 (Mar. 3, 2016).
- "The Suitcase." London Review of Books, vol. 42, no. 15 (Jul. 30, 2020).
- "The Suitcase: Part Two." London Review of Books, vol. 42, no. 16 (Aug. 3, 2020).
- "The Suitcase: Part Three." London Review of Books, vol. 42, no. 17 (Sep. 10, 2020).
Books
[edit]- Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War. London: Granta (1999). ISBN 1862070296.[13]
- U.S. ed.: The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New York: The New Press (2000). ISBN 978-1595589149.[14]
- Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman. London: Faber and Faber (2004). ISBN 057121908X.
- U.S. ed.: The Devil's Broker: Seeking Gold, God, and Glory in Fourteenth-Century Italy. New York: Fourth Estate (2005). ISBN 006077729X.
- The Woman Who Shot Mussolini. London: Faber and Faber (2010). ISBN 978-0571239771.
Documentaries
[edit]- Hidden Hands: A Hidden History of Modernism. London: Channel 4 (1995). 4 episodes.
- Incl. 32-page booklet. ISBN 978-1851441457.
References
[edit]- ^ a b McConnachie, James (30 May 2021). "The Suitcase by Frances Stonor Saunders, review — uncovering family secrets". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
- ^ Moorehead, Caroline (22 October 2021). "Saturated sites". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
- ^ a b Segrave, Elisa (31 July 2021). "On the run from the Nazis: a Polish family's protracted ordeal". The Spectator. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
- ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (24 May 2015). "What happens to head girls?". The Observer. Retrieved 31 October 2023.
- ^ a b "Frances Stonor Saunders" (biography). Shadow Company.
- ^ "Distinguished alumnae". Archived from the original on 18 February 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
- ^ Saunders, Frances Stonor (14 June 2013) [22 October 1995]. "Modern Art was CIA 'Weapon'". The Independent. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
- ^ a b c "Frances Stonor Saunders." Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original. Accessed January 16, 2020.
- ^ "Meetings of Minds", BBC Radio 3 page for first episode
- ^ "Meetings of Minds", BBC Radio 3 page for first episode of second run
- ^ Hughes-Hallett, Lucy. "The Woman Who Shot Mussolini by Frances Stonor Saunders". The Guardian, February 27, 2010. Archived from the original.
- ^ Brown, Lauren (15 July 2022). "PEN Ackerley Prize goes to Stoner Saunders' 'riveting' memoir of borders and belonging". The Bookseller. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
- ^ Laqueur, Walter. "You Had to be There." Review of Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders. The National Interest, no. 58, 99 (2000), pp. 133-135. Archived from the original.
- ^ Baumol, William J., and Hilda Baumol. Review of The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders. Journal of Cultural Economics, vol. 25, no. 1 (Feb. 2001), pp. 73-75. doi:10.1023/A:1007648425606.
External links
[edit]- Articles at MuckRack
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Frances Stonor Saunders at IMDb
- Frances Stonor Saunders at encyclopedia.com
