Michael Pakenham Michael Pakenham Sir Michael Aidan Pakenham, (born 3 November 1943) is a British retired diplomat. Pakenham is the third son of Labour politician Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, and Elizabeth Harman. He is the brother of Thomas Pakenham, Lady Antonia Fraser and Lady Rachel Billington. He was educated at Ampleforth College and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was an exchange fellow at Rice University. Pakenham was briefly a reporter for the "Washington Post" before joining the Foreign Office in 1965. He served in Nairobi and Warsaw before being seconded to the Cabinet Office 1971–74 as Assistant Private Secretary, then Private
Francis of Paola Louis XII died without a male heir and the throne went to Francis I, of the royal family's Valois-Angoulême branch. Louise of Savoy and her spouse, the Count of Angoulême, who is almost certainly the figure depicted to the left of the bed, decided to name the child Francis in honor of the saint. According to a famous story, in the year 1464, he was refused passage by a boatman while trying to cross the Strait of Messina to Sicily. He reportedly laid his cloak on the water, tied one end to his staff as a sail, and sailed across