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
William Pakenham, 4th Earl of Longford William Pakenham, 4th Earl of Longford General William Lygon Pakenham, 4th Earl of Longford (31 January 1819 – 19 April 1887), styled The Honourable William Pakenham before 1860, was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Conservative politician. Pakenham was the second son of Thomas Pakenham, 2nd Earl of Longford, by Lady Georgiana Emma Charlotte Lygon, daughter of William Lygon, 1st Earl Beauchamp. He was educated at Winchester College and entered the army in 1837. After service in both the Crimean War and the Indian Rebellion, Pakenham became Adjutant-General in India in November 1858. He was also colonel of the Northumberland Fusiliers from