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
Pakenham Hall, Suffolk Pakenham Hall, Suffolk Pakenham Hall was a manor house in Pakenham, Suffolk, the capital residence of Pakenham manor. It was demolished and replaced by a more modern house, now called Pakenham Old Hall, in 1900. It was the family seat of the Spring family between 1545 and 1735, and then of the Barons Calthorpe. The manor was originally in the possession of Theodred, Bishop of London before being granted to Bury St Edmunds Abbey by Edward the Confessor in 1042. In the reign of Edward I the manor was held by the Pakenham family, later Earls of Longford. It subsequently