Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford
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Cover image: Peter Stanford's biography of Lord Longford, The Outcast's Outcast (2003) |
Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford,
KG,
PC (
5 December 1905–
3 August 2001) was a
politician,
author, and social reformer.
The second son of the
5th Earl of Longford, he was educated at
Eton and at the
University of Oxford, where he met his future wife,
Elizabeth Harman, and graduated with a First in Modern Greats.
At the age of 25, Pakenham joined the
Conservative Research Department where he developed Education policy for the
Conservative Party. His future wife convinced him to become a
socialist, and to convert to
Roman Catholicism from
Protestantism [
1]. They married on
November 3,
1931. Pakenham embarked on a political career, serving as a junior minister in the
Labour governments of
1945–
1951 and as a
Cabinet member from
1964 to
1968. In
1945 he was created
Baron Pakenham, of Cowley in the City of Oxford, in the
Peerage of the United Kingdom, and in
1961 he inherited from his brother the
Earldom of Longford in the
Peerage of Ireland. Longford was created a
Knight of the Garter in
1971. Over the years he gained a reputation as an eccentric, becoming known for his efforts to rehabilitate offenders and campaigning for the release from prison of the "Moors murderer",
Myra Hindley. His anti-pornography campaigning made him the butt of jokes as "Lord Porn" when he and former prison doctor Christine Temple-Saville set out on a wide-ranging tour of sex industry establishments in the early 1970s to compile a self-funded report.
Under the
House of Lords Act 1999 the majority of hereditary
peers lost the privilege of a seat and right to vote in the
House of Lords. Lord Longford, as the recipient of a hereditary peerage of first creation (from his creation as Baron Pakenham), was, along with many others in the same situation, made a
life peer so that he could retain his seat in the Lords. He was thus created
Baron Pakenham of Cowley, of Cowley in the County of Oxfordshire.
He and his wife, who died in
October 2002 at the age of 96, had eight children, among them the writers
Antonia Fraser,
Rachel Billington, and
Thomas Pakenham. His wife Elizabeth was a noted writer herself, her most famous book being
Victoria R.I. (1964), a biography of Queen Victoria, published in the US as
Born to succeed. She also wrote a two-volume biography of the
Duke of Wellington, and a volume of memoirs,
The Pebbled Shore. She stood for Parliament as Labour candidate for
Cheltenham (constituency) in the
1950 general election.
*The Hon. Francis Pakenham (1905–1945)
*The Rt Hon. The Lord Pakenham (1945–1948)
*The Rt Hon. The Lord Pakenham, PC (1948–1961)
*The Rt Hon. The Earl of Longford, PC (1961–1971)
*The Rt Hon. The Earl of Longford, KG, PC (1971–2001)
*
