Elizabeth Longford

Early life

Elizabeth Harman was born on 30 August 1906 at 108 Harley Street in Marylebone, London. The daughter of eye specialist Nathaniel Bishop Harman, she was educated at Francis Holland School and Headington School, and was an undergraduate at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. "Able, articulate and beautiful", in the words of The New York Times, she was "the Zuleika Dobson of her day, with undergraduates and even dons tumbling over one another to fall in love with her". A few years after her graduation, on 3 November 1931, she married Frank Pakenham, later 7th Earl of Longford, who died in August 2001. Her obituary by the BBC said the marriage was "famously harmonious". The New York Times, in its review of The Pebbled Shore, called Lady Longford "easily the best writer in what is predominantly a literary family".

She and her husband were both devout Roman Catholic converts, Lady Longford having been raised a Unitarian, and avid social reformers. The Longfords had eight children:

1. Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham (27 August 1932)
2. Thomas Francis Dermot Pakenham, 8th Earl of Longford (14 August 1933)
3. The Honourable Patrick Maurice Pakenham (17 April 1937 – 8 June 2005)
4. Lady Judith Elizabeth Pakenham (14 August 1940 – 18 September 2018)
5. Lady Rachel Mary Pakenham (11 May 1942)
6. The Honourable Michael Aidan Pakenham (3 November 1943)
7. Lady Catherine Rose Pakenham (28 February 1946 – 11 August 1969)
8. The Honourable Kevin John Toussaint Pakenham (1 November 1947 – 19 July 2020)

Daughters Lady Antonia Fraser, Lady Rachel Billington, Judith Kazantzis are all writers, and Thomas Pakenham succeeded his father as Earl of Longford. Her brother, John B. Harman, was a physician; his daughter is Labour politician Harriet Harman. Lady Longford was a great-niece of the politician Joseph Chamberlain and a first cousin once removed of the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain.