Elizabeth Longford Biography

British historian and biographer, born in London, educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. During the 1930s she worked as a tutor with the Workers' Educational Association and served on the Paddington and St Pancras Rent Tribunal from 1947 to 1954. As a journalist she produced material for the Daily Express and The Sunday Times between 1953 and 1962. She emerged as a respect historian with her controversial study Jameson's Raid (1960) and, having gained access to the Royal Archives at Windsor, published the compendious Victoria R.I. in 1964. Her numerous subsequent works include Years of the Sword (1969) and Pillar of State (1972), the two parts of her life of Wellington; The Life of Byron (1976); A Pilgrimage of Passion (1979), her biography of Wilfred Scawen Blunt; and Elizabeth R. (1983). She is the editor of The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes (1989). The Pebbled Shore, her autobiography, appeared in 1986.