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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Margot Fonteyn
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(stage name of Margaret Hookham, 1919–91, DBE 1956)
Britain's most distinguished ballet dancer, who at the age of 16 created her first major role as the Bride in *Ashton's Le Baiser de la Fée (1935) with the Vic-Wells company. Many other Ashton roles were created for her at Sadler's Wells in the remaining years before the war; and afterwards, when the company evolved into the *Royal Ballet, she continued to give some of her greatest performances in new Ashton ballets (among them *Symphonic Variations in 1946 and *Ondine in 1958). By the early 1960s she seemed to be coming to the end of an immensely distinguished career, outstanding not so much for her technique as for an exceptional ability to convey emotion through the flow of her line and phrasing, together with a natural ease in almost any role.
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She then, astonishingly, began a new chapter in which those talents seemed even more remarkable – in her partnership with Rudolf Nureyev, who defected from Russia in 1961. She first danced with him in Giselle in 1962 and they went on to create a succession of famous pairs of lovers, including Marguerite and Armand (1963) for *Ashton and *Romeo and Juliet (1965) for Kenneth MacMillan. A favourite guest artist throughout the world, Fonteyn received on her 60th birthday in 1979 a very rare tribute; the Russian ballet establishment named her prima ballerina assoluta, a title given officially to only three other ballerinas in the entire history of the Russian ballet.
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She suffered one major tragedy in her personal life. Her husband, the Panamanian diplomat and politician Roberto Arias, was the victim in 1964 of an assassination attempt which left him totally paralysed. He died two years before her, in 1989.
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