Frances Hélène Jeanne Stonor Saunders FRSL (born 14 April 1966) is a British journalist and historian.

Early life

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

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

Articles

Books

  • Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War. London: Granta (1999). ISBN 1862070296.[13]
  • Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman. London: Faber and Faber (2004). ISBN 057121908X.
  • The Woman Who Shot Mussolini. London: Faber and Faber (2010). ISBN 978-0571239771.

Documentaries

  • Hidden Hands: A Hidden History of Modernism. London: Channel 4 (1995). 4 episodes.
    • Incl. 32-page booklet. ISBN 978-1851441457.

References

  1. 1 2 McConnachie, James (30 May 2021). "The Suitcase by Frances Stonor Saunders, review — uncovering family secrets". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
  2. ↑ Moorehead, Caroline (22 October 2021). "Saturated sites". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
  3. 1 2 Segrave, Elisa (31 July 2021). "On the run from the Nazis: a Polish family's protracted ordeal". The Spectator. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
  4. ↑ Thorpe, Vanessa (24 May 2015). "What happens to head girls?". The Observer. Retrieved 31 October 2023.
  5. 1 2 "Frances Stonor Saunders" (biography). Shadow Company.
  6. ↑ "Distinguished alumnae". Archived from the original on 18 February 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  7. ↑ Saunders, Frances Stonor (14 June 2013) [22 October 1995]. "Modern Art was CIA 'Weapon'". The Independent. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
  8. 1 2 3 "Frances Stonor Saunders." Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original. Accessed January 16, 2020.
  9. ↑ "Meetings of Minds", BBC Radio 3 page for first episode
  10. ↑ "Meetings of Minds", BBC Radio 3 page for first episode of second run
  11. ↑ Hughes-Hallett, Lucy. "The Woman Who Shot Mussolini by Frances Stonor Saunders". The Guardian, February 27, 2010. Archived from the original.
  12. ↑ Brown, Lauren (15 July 2022). "PEN Ackerley Prize goes to Stoner Saunders' 'riveting' memoir of borders and belonging". The Bookseller. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
  13. ↑ 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.
  14. ↑ 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.
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