Anne Fremantle


Anne Jackson Fremantle, born Anne-Marie Huth Jackson, was an English-American journalist, translator, poet, novelist and biographer. A Catholic convert, she was a prominent host in postwar New York. Evelyn Waugh called her "the smartest woman in America". She published around 30 books and thousands of articles.

Biography

Anne Marie Huth Jackson was born at Aix-les-Bains in 1909, the daughter of the banker Frederick Huth Jackson and the poet Claire Annabel Caroline Grant Duff. She grew up in Aix-les Bains, London and Sussex and was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College. She went on to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, recalling her time there as "blissful days" and retaining Oxford friendships throughout her life. In 1930 she married Christopher Fremantle, a painter and follower of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. The couple eventually had three children, including the art historian Richard Fremantle.
Anne Fremantle stood as a Labour candidate in the 1935 general election, challenging Alfred Duff Cooper's safe Conservative seat of Westminster St George's, and managed not to lose her deposit.
At the start of the war she worked in London as an ambulance driver and BBC broadcaster. For the safety of her children, she moved to the United States, working in the British Embassy in Washington. She stayed in the US after the war, taking American citizenship, and converting to Roman Catholicism. The couple lived in New York, but increasingly spent time each year in Paris and Mexico, where Christopher Fremantle lectured to other followers of Gurdjieff. Eventually they bought property in Mexico. After her husband's death, Anne Fremantle returned to live in London, and died there on 26 December 2002.

Works