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
Elizabeth Pakenham, 1st Countess of Longford Longford barony held by Elizabeth's great-great-uncles, Francis Aungier, 1st Earl of Longford, and Ambrose Aungier, 2nd Earl of Longford, of the first creation, was revived when her husband Thomas Pakenham was created Baron Longford in the Peerage of Ireland. In 1785 the earldom was revived and Lady Longford was created Countess of Longford in her own right. The family seats were Pakenham Hall in County Westmeath and Longford Castle in County Longford (demolished in 1972). The Countess of Longford survived her husband, who died in April 1766, aged 52; his title was inherited by their eldest son, Edward. When the