First Family of Biographers

© Cheryl Bolen

Those of you who read my blogs know I’m a passionate reader of biographies, especially ones about dead Englishmen and women. Quite by accident a few years ago, I realized many of these biographies I’d read were written by three generations of women in a remarkable British family.

These non-fiction titles from my personal shelves were all penned by members of Lady Elizabeth Longford’s family.

This dynasty began with the intellectual Elizabeth Longford (1906-2002), a mother of eight and wife of Frank Packenham, later 7th Earl of Longford (a descendant of the 1st Duchess of Wellington). Elizabeth’s firstborn is eminent biographer Antonia Fraser (b. 1932), and Antonia’s daughter Flora (b. 1958) is one of the premiere biographers in England today.

I hung on every line of Elizabeth’s 1986 autobiography, The Pebbled Shore. She and her future husband were in the first wave of Oxford intellectuals following…