Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford 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
Thomas Pakenham (Augher MP) also had four younger sons, Thomas, Philip, Henry and Robert, and a daughter, Frances, who married George Nugent of Castlerichard, County Louth. Thomas Pakenham (Augher MP) Sir Thomas Pakenham (1649-1703) was an Irish barrister and politician: he sat in the Irish House of Commons as MP for Augher and held the office of Serjeant-at-law (Ireland). He was the grandfather of the first Baron Longford. He was the eldest son of Henry Pakenham, of Pakenham Hall, County Westmeath, and his first wife Mary Lill. The Pakenham family, who were originally from Suffolk, had come to Ireland about 1575, in the entourage