New & Current Releases
Archives: A-Z By Title
Archives: A-Z By Author
Advanced Search

All-Time High Scores
Best Of 2006
Best Of 2005
Best Of 2004
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Books In Our Forums

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed books.

Margot Fonteyn
A Life
by Meredith Daneman


9.6

based on 14 reviews
read critic reviews
how did we calculate this?

based on 3 votes
read user comments
rate this book

Compare prices at pricegrabber.com

Buy it at powells.com

Buy it at amazon.com

Buy it at amazon.co.uk

Official Publisher Site

Meredith Daneman, a novelist and former dancer, reveals the fascinating story of Peggy Hookham, a little girl from suburban England, who grew up to become a Dame of the British Empire and the most famous ballerina in the world. [Viking Books]

Viking Books, 654 pages
10/07/2004
$32.95

ISBN: 0670843709

Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Booklist Donna Seaman

The full story of her exceptional life and complex temperament has never before been told, and Daneman, a dancer and a novelist, seems to have been born to write this capacious and compulsively readable biography. [1 Nov 2004, p.458]

Daily Telegraph Laura Thompson

The best biographies are not merely stories of lives; they have a real life of their own. Meredith Daneman's Margot Fonteyn is such a book: the author achieves an astonishing imaginative fusion with her subject.

New York Observer Mindy Aloff

The book is undeniably riveting. The narrative is tightly plotted... , the writing gracious, informed and often wise, the pacing positively masterful.

The Economist

As an ex-ballerina, [Daneman] describes dancing with rare authenticity. Fonteyn's New York appearance in “Sleeping Beauty” in 1949 is thrillingly described.

The New York Times Book Review Toni Bentley

She has also captured on the page the power of nobility radiated by her subject, a woman so dedicated, so self-effacing, so stubborn and so loving that her story manages to attain by its tragic ending the same effect as one of her performances.

Chicago Tribune Alan Peter Ryan

Balletomanes and Anglophiles will positively swoon at the inside stories, the vibrant accounts of performances and curtain calls and ovations and showers of roses, all in addition to the book's rich detail and telling insights, and if the earth doesn't exactly move beneath your reading chair, it will certainly tremble just a little.

The New York Times Jennifer Dunning

Ms. Daneman sometimes goes to extraordinary lengths to express rather ordinary perceptions. But she has a wonderful ear and eye for detail.

The New Yorker

Probably the closest examination that could be made of the notoriously reticent English ballerina.

The Spectator Colette Clark

The second half of the book is the most thrilling. The account of the shooting and crippling of Margot’s husband, Tito Arias, in 1964, in Panama, her reactions to it, the subsequent story up to his death and her own terrible illness is brilliantly done.

New York Review Of Books Robert Gottlieb

Meredith Daneman has given us what, despite lapses of tone and judgment that are, perhaps, the inevitable price of so personal a labor of love, is certain to be the definitive Life.

Daily Telegraph Louise Levene

However much dirt is dished in this unflinching but always sympathetic biography, Daneman never loses sight of her book's driving force: the beauty and emotional truth of Fonteyn's dancing which floats forever in the mind's eye of every one of us who saw it.

Boston Globe Christine Temin

At 654 pages, this biography begs to be called ''definitive," and it is. It's so packed with the day-to-day, though, that you have to search out the grand themes.

Chicago Sun-Times Hedy Weiss

At turns fascinating and maddening.

The Guardian Judith Mackrell

It's one of the weaknesses of her book that it falls too readily into the magical writing and sentimental overload that are endemic to dance writing.

The average user rating for this book is 9.6 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Judith P gave it a10:
I am a writer, a PhD student and a reader of biographies, and I very slightly knew Margot Fonteyn: Meredith Daneman's biography is splendid, not only for the tact a discretion with which she tells the story but the way in which the supporting cast in Margot's life has life and substance, and the whole takes place in social history. The style is lovely, and perfect for the genre

Pierre M gave it a10:
It was very moving reading his biography of Fonteyn, a ballerina I saw as often as I could.

Discuss this book in our forums

Return to top of page

Margot Fonteyn A Life by Meredith Daneman

Margot Fonteyn
A Life
by Meredith Daneman