Frances Stonor Saunders


Frances Hélène Jeanne Stonor Saunders is a British journalist and historian.

Personal life

Frances Stonor Saunders, who lives in London, is the daughter of Julia Camoys Stonor and Donald Robin Slomnicki Saunders. Her parents divorced in 1977, and their marriage was annulled in 1978.

Career

A few years after graduating with a first-class honours degree in English from St Anne's College, University of Oxford, Stonor 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 various American art critics and Abstract Expressionist painters with the CIA. , her first book, developed from her work on the documentary, concentrating on the history of the covertly CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom. Stonor 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, she resigned in protest over the sacking of Peter Wilby, the then-editor. In 2004 and 2005 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, recounts the life and career of John Hawkwood, a condottiere of the 14th century. English-born, Hawkwood 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 is a biography of Violet Gibson, the Anglo-Irish aristocrat who shot Benito Mussolini in 1926, wounding him slightly.

Published works