Margot Fonteyn Meredith Daneman Viking, 654pp, £20 ISBN 0670913375

Margot Fonteyn was the greatest ballerina of the 20th century. That claim, reflecting opinion in the English-speaking world, is central to Meredith Daneman's biography. Fonteyn reached her peak as a performer in the middle of the century and remained near the top for 30 years. This was a truly remarkable achievement given that, in the eyes of her early colleagues, she was plump, uppity, scraggy, remote, stubborn, naive and technically unaccomplished.

But the shy English girl brought over from Shanghai by the ultimate ballet mum (nicknamed Black Queen, after the steely character in Ninette de Valois's ballet Checkmate) timed her entrance brilliantly. From her first role, aged 14, as one of 28 snowflakes in Casse-Noisette, to the Royal Opera House gala that marked her 60th birthday and retirement from the stage, Fonteyn, more than any other artist, epitomised the golden age of British ballet.

That surprising triumph grew directly from a magic circle of English dancers, composers and choreographers, many of whom were former associates of Sergei Diaghilev. They included the choreographer Frederick Ashton, the composer Constant Lambert, and the founder of the Royal Ballet, Ninette de Valois. It was de Valois who discovered Peggy Hookham, whose career might never have progressed beyond playing snowflakes had she not changed her name to Fonteyn.

De Valois saw in this dark-eyed, olive-skinned girl the makings of a home-grown ballerina. She first inflicted Fonteyn on Ashton in 1935, following the departure of the Royal Ballet's first ballerina, Alicia Markova. As Daneman eloquently writes, Fonteyn was "less the shimmering water sprite of Ashton's imagination than an earthbound novice with 'buttery feet' who would not bend, and who could not for the life of her grasp the luxuriant whooshes which he had picked up from his mentor Bronislava Nijinska".

Ashton later admitted to "a great frustration in being unable to mould her". The breakthrough came when Fonteyn "suddenly burst into tears and rushed over to Ashton and threw her arms around his neck. 'I'm sorry,' she sobbed, 'I'm trying my best. I can't do anything more.'" Ashton believed that the victory was his - she had yielded. As Daneman dryly comments, "Men never know when they have been conquered."

In writing this first in-depth biography of Fonteyn, Daneman has benefited from the testimonies of many of the principal and bit-part players (although, in the ten years it took her to write it, many have passed away). Even so, the character of the ballerina never quite steps off the stage. Fonteyn was enigmatic to the last, diffident yet stubborn, often unconfident but proud of her own tenacity. Perhaps even in private, she never stopped playing a role.

Nevertheless, the most revealing sections of the book are those that deal with Fonteyn's private life - much of which she conspicuously airbrushed out of her autobiography, published in 1975. The naturally regal ballerina, noted for her capacity to portray the innocence of an Aurora or a 14-year-old Juliet, was a passionate woman who had affairs with several of her dancing partners, with other "admirers" and, notably, with Constant Lambert, the married and tortured man with whom she maintained secret trysts for eight years.

Lambert's name appears just three times in Fonteyn's autobiography. She sought to emphasise another relationship: that with the Panamanian politician and playboy Roberto "Tito" Arias, whom she first met when he was an 18-year-old undergraduate at Cambridge. Tito disappeared for 12 years, married and had three children, before returning as a rich, charming ambassador determined to win Fonteyn. She succumbed and, to the horror of most of the ballet world, became the wife of a serial adulterer.

The assassination attempt that paralysed Tito happened as Fonteyn was preparing to divorce him but, as if acting the part of a stage heroine, she decided to devote her life to his care. This led to her extending her career unwisely and undertaking tours simply to support Tito, after whose death she was to spend her last years in lonely exile on their Panamanian ranch.

For nearly 400 pages of this book, Margot holds centre stage. Then inevitably, Rudolf Nureyev leaps into view. Born on a train in Siberia between Fonteyn's first Swan Lake and her 19th birthday, the most exciting male dancer since Nijinsky sought only one partner in the west when he defected in 1961 as a 23-year-old - Fonteyn. She was reluctant, but de Valois persuaded her, and their partnership changed the course of ballet history.

The grande dame became a princess again, the Tartar boy her prince. His thril-ling physicality and her subtlety and grace brought audiences throughout the world to their feet. But what happened off-stage? Did they or didn't they? Daneman seems to come down on the side of those who feel that, given the physical intimacy and emotional highs of their performances, it is inevitable that they did. Nureyev was homosexual, but not exclusively so, and Fonteyn had bedded other gay men. Nevertheless, as Daneman writes: "Whatever took place behind closed doors . . . was as nothing compared to what happened on the stage, in front of our eyes."

Daneman has huge but not uncritical sympathy for her subject, and manages to bring the dancing to life. Her work leaves little room for other biographers. Even if the non-English-speaking ballet world has yet to rank Fonteyn alongside the likes of Anna Pavlova and Galina Ulanova, there is no doubt that she was the perfect embodiment of that great achievement - the English style.

Stephen Phillips is a journalist, television producer and arts management consultant

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