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

• "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

• 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

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