Margot Fonteyn

Margot Fonteyn was the defining British ballerina of the century, and her career was extended by twenty years when a Russian defector nineteen years younger asked to dance with her. She was born Peggy Hookham in Reading, spent part of her childhood in Shanghai, and trained under de Valois at the Vic-Wells school; Karsavina coached her in Firebird, passing on the role from the woman it was made for. Ashton made most of his major works on her over thirty years and the partnership defined the company's style. She was planning retirement at forty-two when Rudolf Nureyev arrived in the West, and their Giselle in 1962 and Marguerite and Armand made her a figure of international celebrity she had never quite been before; they danced together for fifteen years and took a reported eighty-nine curtain calls after one Vienna Swan Lake. She was arrested in Panama in 1959 during a coup attempt organised by her husband, the diplomat Roberto Arias, and deported. In 1964 he was shot and left quadriplegic, and she nursed him and danced to pay for it - which is why she was still performing into her sixties. She retired to a cattle farm in Panama, was ill and poor at the end, and the Royal Ballet held a gala to help. She is buried beside Arias. She was made prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Ballet, a title given to only a handful of dancers in history. Her partnership with Nureyev is generally counted the most famous in ballet. She wrote an autobiography in 1975 and presented a television series on the history of dance.

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