The Best Margot Fonteyn Sources

I wanted to say thank you to everyone for coming along with me for Margot Fonteyn Month here on the blog. I understand that she/it is a niche topic in history but I think she is fascinating and deserves more attention! It’s been a lot of fun doing my research and hearing from readers. (Always feel free to send me a message or an email.) To finish up the month, I wanted to leave you with a few Margot Fonteyn sources! If you want to do a deeper dive on Margot or on ballet in general, these are perfect for you. And once again, thank you for joining me this month!

Margot Fonteyn, Meredith Daneman

Margot Fonteyn – born plain Peggy Hookham – was dreamed into existence by the architects of British ballet: Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton and Constant Lambert. Carried to fame on a wave of wartime patriotism, Margot’s sense of duty rather than ambition propelled her forward. Yet her gifts were such that her pre-eminence would come to eclipse the careers of subsequent generations.Ballet is a fairytale world; if Margot, like the pure and poetic heroine of Swan Lake, was a natural Odette, she would also have to contend with virtue’s raw shadow-side in the guise of Constant Lambert, Roberto Arias and Rudolph Nureyev – the men who, like Von Rothbart, were to take possession of her heart.

Why You Should Read This…

Meredith Daneman is the expert on Fonteyn. She graduated from the Royal Ballet School in London and danced with the Australian Ballet. After she retired from the stage, she turned to writing, which led to her incredible biography. Daneman has done an extensive amount of research including interviews with those who worked with Fonteyn, who were related to her, and those influenced by her. (Most biographers have other biographies to work off of, but not so for Daneman.) This is a sizeable biography, but is very readable and one of the most dramatic life stories I’ve seen. If you want to know more about Margot Fonteyn, you need to start here!

Margot (directed by Tony Palmer)

The life and tribulations of world renown ballerina Margot Fonteyn as told by herself, friends and fellow dancers.

Why You Should Watch This…

If you are more of a watcher and less of a reader, this is the documentary for you. Tony Palmer’s 2005 Margot is not a short documentary, coming in at just under three hours. However, it features countless interviews with Margot herself, fellow dancers like Robert Helpmann, Rudolf Nureyev, Moira Shearer, and Beryl Grey. (Obviously many are archival interviews but they are no less interesting.) Previous documentaries made during her life tended to skew towards the very positive. Margot gets into the darker parts of Fonteyn’s life, including her complicated marriage and her relationship with conductor Constance Lambert. It is one of the strongest docs I’ve seen, and a must-see for any ballet fan.

*This periodically gets fully uploaded on Youtube. I also purchased it on Google Play for $5CAD- it should be easy to find! I’ve linked a clip of the first 9 minutes if you are interested. (Apologies if it is taken down!)

There are also other documentaries that have been uploaded on YouTube and are available other places. They are interesting and usually feature quite a bit of performance footage, as well as interviews with Fonteyn herself. I’ve linked The Margot Fonteyn Story from 1989 here below. (Again apologies if the video is removed!) Fonteyn narrated it and was fairly involved with it, so it does skew towards quite a positive spin on everything. It does also include footage of her life in Panama, though!