Artemis Cooper

Artemis Cooper, Lady Beevor FRSL (born the Hon. Alice Clare Antonia Opportune Cooper; 22 April 1953) is a British writer, primarily of biographies. She is married to historian Sir Antony Beevor.

Family life

She is the only daughter of The 2nd Viscount Norwich (better known as John Julius Norwich) and his first wife, Anne (née Clifford), and a paternal granddaughter of Duff and Diana Cooper. She has a brother, the Hon. Jason Charles Duff Bede Cooper, and a half-sister, Allegra Huston, the only child of Lord Norwich and Enrica Soma (then-estranged wife of American film director John Huston).

Cooper attended the French Lycee, the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Woldingham and Camden School for Girls. She then went to St Hugh's College, Oxford and obtained a degree in English language and literature.

She spent time in Egypt with Voluntary Service Overseas teaching English at the University of Alexandria. She has also lived in America, mostly in New Mexico.

In 1986, Artemis Cooper married fellow writer and historian Antony Beevor. The couple have two children, Nella and Adam.

Writing career Cooper's first book was a collection of the letters of her grandmother, Lady Diana Cooper.

When her biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor appeared in 2012, it was serialised on BBC Radio 4. It was followed in September 2013 by The Broken Road, effectively the third volume of Leigh Fermor's memoir of his walking trip from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul in the 1930s. Cooper was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2017.