Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford

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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, but was soon convinced to become a socialist, partly by his future wife, whom he married on November 3, 1931. He 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 in the 1950 general election.

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Titles from birth to death

  • 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)

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External links

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