Background

Elizabeth Longford was born as Elizabeth Harman, the eldest of five children, on August 30, 1906, in London, United Kingdom. Her parents Nathaniel Bishop Harman and Katherine Harman were both doctors.

Education

Elizabeth Longford was educated at the Francis Holland School, and Headington School in Oxford.

In December 1925 she won a scholarship to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she took her Master of Arts. Socially and academically Elizabeth had outstanding success at Oxford under Hugh Gaitskell and the Oxford don Maurice Bowra.

Career

After university, Longford worked for the Workers' Educational Association, lecturing on politics, economics, and literature for six years.

On November 3, 1931, Elizabeth married Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford.

Elizabeth also ran for Parliament three times but she never managed to be elected. Failing this, she turned her hand to writing, first composing newspaper columns on raising a family and then turning her interest in history into a career as a biographer and political writer.

In the 1950s Elizabeth's writing career began because she was so often telephoned by journalists for advice on parenthood that Lord Beaverbrook gave her a column in the Sunday Express. Longford became a weekly contributor to the Express, then to The News of the World and The Sunday Times. She was a television panelist on Any Questions. Then George Weidenfeld lured her into publishing, turning her Express articles into Points for Parents (1954). A collection of articles by distinguished Catholics edited by her, Catholic Approaches (1955) followed. Neither of these early ventures was successful.

Longford was a successful biographer. Her first idea for a subject was her great-uncle Joseph Chamberlain, but the failure to gain access to the Chamberlain papers reduced it to just one episode in his life, the Jameson Raid of 1895-1996. Jameson’s Raid was published in January 1960 to critical acclaim. AJP Taylor chose it as his book of the year.

Victoria R.I., published in the autumn of 1964, three years after her husband Frank succeeded to his brother’s earldom, fulfilled the Elizabeth Longford’s ambition of writing a book about “a historical woman”. It was a popular success, written with the understanding of Queen Victoria’s character and a light touch based on solid research which made it an easy and rewarding read.

Elizabeth’s agent, Graham Watson, proposed Mary Queen of Scots as her next subject, but her daughter Antonia stepped in backed up by George Weidenfeld. The result was a two-volume life of Wellington, The Years of the Sword (1969), and Pillar of State (1972), which was perhaps her finest historical work. A biography of the poet and seducer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, A Pilgrimage of Passion (1979), was less successful, perhaps because she found it difficult to empathize entirely with her subject.

The year 1969 was a glittering one for the Longford family with five of them producing books, feted collectively at a Foyle's luncheon. But that summer was a dark one: while Elizabeth was visiting her diplomat son in Warsaw, her youngest daughter, Catherine, was killed in a car crash. In her memory, a prize for young women journalists was set up, won in its early years by the Guardian's Polly Toynbee, Tina Brown and Sally Beauman, and still a fertile source of youthful talent.

In the 1980s and ’90s, Longford published a series of works about the British monarchy and autobiography. The Pebbled Shore (1986) and another big biography Elizabeth R (1983), which her friend John Grigg, who did not share her roseate view of the House of Windsor, bluntly told her was “all guff and gush”.

Longford published over twenty works altogether, some under the name Elizabeth Pakenham, Elizabeth Longford, and as the Countess of Longford: Winston Churchill (1974), The Royal House of Windsor (1974; revised, 1984), and also wrote such biographical works as Byron (1976), The Queen Mother: A Biography (1981), Darling Loosy: Letters to Princess Louise, 1856-1939 (1991), Royal Throne: The Future of the Monarchy (1993), Victoria R.I., with a new postscript, (1998). Her most recent works are The Pocket Biography of Queen Victoria (1999) and Queen Victoria (2000).

Elizabeth Harman, Countess of Longford died at the age of 96 on October 23, 2002, 14 months after her husband.

Achievements

• Elizabeth Longford was a successful historian, biographer, and writer. Her close connections with the aristocracy gave her unrivaled access to royal archives for her work. She wrote numerous books on the royal family including The Queen Mother: A Biography (1981), Darling Loosy: Letters to Princess Louise, 1856-1939 (1991), Royal Throne: The Future of the Monarchy (1993), Victoria RI (1963), The Pocket Biography of Queen Victoria (1999), and Queen Victoria (2000).
  
  Elizabeth also ran for Parliament three times but she never managed to be elected: as a Labour candidate for Cheltenham in 1935, a Labour candidate for King’s Norton in January 1944, and a Labour candidate for Oxford in 1950.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

    (Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 1840-1922, was one of England's tru...)

    1979
  • Eminent Victorian Women

    (Elizabeth Longford has chosen eleven Victorian women who ...)

    1981
  • Queen Victoria

    (Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 on the death o...)

    2000
  • Byron

    (Biography of romantic Scots-English poet George Gordon, 8...)

    1976
  • Jameson's Raid 1960
  • Victoria, R.I. 1964
  • Wellington: The Years of the Sword 1969
  • Winston Churchill 1974
  • The Royal House of Windsor 1974
  • Byron's Greece 1975
  • The Queen Mother: A Biography 1981
  • Elizabeth R 1983
  • The Pebbled Shore: The Memoirs of Elizabeth Longford 1986
  • Darling Loosy: Letters to Princess Louise, 1856-1939 1991
  • Royal Throne: The Future of the Monarchy 1993
  • The Pocket Biography of Queen Victoria 1999

Religion

Elizabeth Longford was raised in a Unitarian family. In the 1940s her husband Frank Pakenham converted her to Catholicism.

Politics

The firsthand experience of the Depression swung Elizabeth Longford leftwards and turned her into a socialist. Her name was mooted as a prospective Labour candidate for Stoke. A lifelong socialist Elizabeth Longford ran for Parliament three times but she never managed to be elected. She made several attempts to win election to the House of Commons as a Labour Members of Parliament but was unsuccessful, unlike her niece Harriet Harman, a minister in both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's governments.

Elizabeth joined the Cowley Labour Party and unsuccessfully stood as Labour candidate for Cheltenham in 1935.

Longford nursed the Birmingham constituency of King’s Norton for Labour. Elizabeth’s sixth child, Michael, was born. She had, as she confessed, “an addiction to motherhood” which triumphed over her other passion, Labour politics, and when the party tried to issue an edict against further fertility she resigned as prospective Labour candidate for King’s Norton in January 1944.

In 1950 Elizabeth stood for the last time as a Labour candidate, this time for Oxford, again unsuccessfully, despite the support of such Labour big guns as Gaitskell and Harold Wilson.

Elizabeth's husband Frank Pakenham worked for the Conservative Research Office in London but Elizabeth steered his conservative viewpoints toward her socialist beliefs.

Membership

• Workers’ Educational Association , United Kingdom

• Maurice Bowra’s Circle , United Kingdom

• 

  Royal Society of Literature , United Kingdom

• Elizabeth Longford was on the board of trustees of the London's National Portrait Gallery.

  National Portrait Gallery , United Kingdom

Personality

The outstanding feature of Elizabeth Longford's character was her goodness and generosity of spirit. In a literary world not noted for this, she was almost unique in her encouragement of younger biographers.

Quotes from others about the person

• "She is wise and very clever,
  
  Makes mistakes oh! never! never!
  
  We are beauties her and me
  
  Just as women should rightly be,
  
  So brilliant, brainy, driving genes..." - one of her grandchildren.
  
  “When I was a child, we thought of my mother as a goddess.” - Thomas Pakenham.

Connections

Elizabeth Longford married Francis Pakenhamon on November 3, 1931, at The Church of St Margaret’s, Westminster. The Longfords had eight children: Lady Antonia Fraser, Lady Rachel Billington, Thomas Frank Dermot Pakenham, Judith Kazantzis, Patrick Maurice Pakenham, Michael Pakenham, Kevin John Toussaint Pakenham, and Lady Catherine Rose Pakenham.

Father:

Nathaniel Bishop Harman

Mother:

Katherine Harman

Daughter:

Lady Antonia Fraser

Daughter:

Rachel Billington

Son:

Thomas Frank Dermot Pakenham

Thomas Frank Dermot Pakenham is the 8th Earl of Longford.

Daughter:

Judith Kazantzis

Son:

Patrick Maurice Pakenham

Son:

Michael Pakenham

Son:

Kevin John Toussaint Pakenham

Daughter:

Catherine Rose Pakenham

Catherine, a journalist on the Daily Telegraph Magazine, was killed in a car accident at the age of 23, in whose memory the Catherine Pakenham Award for young women journalists was founded.

husband:

Francis Aungier Pakenham

Francis Aungier Pakenham was the 7th Earl of Longford.

Great-uncle:

Joseph Chamberlain

Joseph Chamberlain was the Victorian statesman.

Brother:

John Bishop Harman

Friend:

John Betjeman

Friend:

Isaiah Berlin

Friend:

David Cecil

Friend:

Stephen Harold Spender

colleague:

George Weidenfeld