A royal biographer par excellence , as is evidenced by Victoria RI , Elizabeth R , and The Queen Mother , Longford is ideally suited to edit this work. It is absolutely jam-packed with tempting tidbits, ranging from Henry VIII's witticisms to all sorts of entertaining comments about royalty by their contemporaries. A sentence or two by the editor sets the stage in each case, thereby giving the reader a sense of context, as well as making the anecdotal material that much more palatable. Teachers needing to add spice to their lectures, speakers to their presentations, writers to their books, will find this work invaluable. It entertains as it informs
Elizabeth (Harman) Pakenham, Countess of Longford, CBE was born on 30 August 1906. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Bishop Harman. She married Sir Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, KG, PC, son of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford and Lady Mary Julia Child-Villiers, on 3 November 1931. She died on 23 October 2002.
Her married name became Pakenham.
The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography was established in 2003 in memory of Elizabeth Longford (1906-2002), the British author, biographer and historian. The £5,000 prize is awarded annually for a historical biography published in the preceding year. The Elizabeth Longford Prize is sponsored by Flora Fraser and Peter Soros and administered by the Society of Authors.
