Lady Longford, a Biographer, Political Activist and Mother of Writers -- Rest in Peace

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Subject: Lady Longford, a Biographer, Political Activist and Mother of Writers

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Oct. 23

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Date Posted: October 26, 2002 7:33:30 EDT

Elizabeth Longford, the best-selling biographer and political activist who was the widow of the social reformer Lord Longford and the matriarch of a family that bred other well-known writers, died on Wednesday at her home in Sussex. She was 96.

From her school years through the nearly seven decades of her marriage to Lord Longford, she was famous for her intelligence, beauty, vitality and vivacity.

She was already an academic and social success at Oxford University when John Betjeman, one of the many literary figures she befriended, called her "the aesthetes' moll." Quintin Hogg, who later as Lord Hailsham became a Conservative lord chancellor, said, "There was not an undergraduate who would not consider it a privilege to hold an umbrella over her."

Among her seven surviving children are the writers Antonia Fraser, Rachel Billington and Thomas Pakenham and the poet Judith Kazantzis. A daughter, Catherine, a magazine writer, died in a car crash at age 23 in 1969, and a prominent prize for women in journalism is named for her.

Lady Longford confessed to having "an addiction to motherhood" and continued to have children even after her Labor Party handlers said it was getting in the way of her parliamentary career. She ran for office unsuccessfully twice and had to bow out of a third contest, in which she was the favorite, because of pressure over her intent to have more children.

She was born Elizabeth Harman and was to be known as Elizabeth Pakenham for the first three decades of her marriage to Frank Pakenham; they became Lord and Lady Longford in 1961. She was the daughter of two Harley Street physicians and had a privileged upbringing.

Her biographies are known for their strong narrative lines and their wealth of research and detail, drawn from personal visits to historic sites. Her obituary in The Guardian of London said that she advised her children and grandchildren that "not to study history would be like living in a house with no windows."

The Longford marriage was one of the most celebrated in Britain. As partners, they deeply influenced each other.

She steered him away from his early Conservative Party enthusiasm to her socialist convictions. He persuaded her to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1946, a step he took in 1940.

Lord Longford, who died at 95 in August 2001, was a Labor peer famous for championing social outcasts and unpopular causes. When he was lampooned in later life as everything from an endearing eccentric to a bumbling loon, she was his passionate defender.

He was as unkempt as she was well turned out, and their contrasting appearances illustrated the nature of their partnership. Lord Longford always credited his wife with providing him with the self-control and common sense that he lacked.

Auberon Waugh, a godson, once said, "I think he sees himself a little bit as a knight errant going out to do things which will please her."

Lord Longford said at one of the couple's many anniversary parties: "I think it would be very difficult to become bored with Elizabeth. No one else has ever been."

Her writing career began after her third campaign for Parliament in 1950 and running after having had her eighth child. She began writing articles on family life and parenting for Lord Beaverbrook's Express newspapers. A collection of them, "Points for Parents," was published by George Weidenfeld in 1956, and from there she moved on to larger subjects.

She received good reviews for her history "Jameson's Raid" in 1960 and then achieved widespread success with the biography "Victoria R. I." in 1964; a two-volume life of the Duke of Wellington, "The Years of the Sword," in 1969; and "Pillar of State" in 1972.

By the 1980's Lady Longford, who had begun public life as an ardent socialist, had become close to the royal family, and her next major biography was "Elizabeth R," in 1983. She wrote about royals and political figures into her 90's, publishing her last book, a brief history called "Queen Victoria," in 1999.

Sarah Bradford, a biographer of George VI, wrote in The Independent of London that Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother had said she felt that women could be divided into two groups, either beautiful and stupid or clever and plain, "except Elizabeth Longford, of course."

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