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
Shire of Pakenham remaining rural area was renamed the Shire of Pakenham on 1 September 1974. On 15 December 1994, the Shire of Pakenham was abolished, and, along with parts of the City of Cranbourne (Koo Wee Rup and Lang Lang) and the Shire of Sherbrooke (around Emerald and Cockatoo), was merged into the newly created Shire of Cardinia. Council met at the Shire Offices, in Duncan Drive, Pakenham. The facility is now the headquarters for the Shire of Cardinia. The Shire of Pakenham was divided into four ridings on 1 April 1988, each of which elected three councillors: Outer Metropolitan: Rural: Shire