Out of an Edwardian childhood

Press, 25 February 1989, Page 27

Out of an Edwardian childhood

The Pebbled Shore: The Memoirs of Elizabeth Longford. Sceptre, 1988. 335 pp. Index. $17.99 (paperback). (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) Elizabeth Longford has a claim to fame both as a recorder of history and as an actor on the historical and political stage. She is a leading British historian and a biographer of note, and her numerous previous publications include an account of the Jameson Raid and lives of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington. In “The Pebbled Shore,” first published in 1986 and now reissued in paperback, she turns the skills achieved through her concentration on

the biographies of others to her autobiography, although interestingly she eschews that definition and refers to the work more loosely as her memoirs. Perhaps she felt that allowed a less formally structured work and more licence to expand or contract the years (or decades) as she wished. For the book is somewhat loosely strung together; much that the reader would like to know is omitted and other matters are dealt with at rather wearisome length. Recalling a play she produced at Oxford she quotes a reviewer who wrote, “Quite a lot of pruning would

not have been amiss.” Longford comments, “I never learnt the lesson. Never in my life have I managed to write a book, article or speech that was the right length first go. For me, production and pruning, creation and cutting are wearisome inseparables.” One feels that having at the age of 80 finally completed her memoirs she was reluctant to prune and cut as much as necessary, and most readers will at some time in the book echo the “Isis” reviewer. But that reviewer also used the adjectives “charming, clever, amusing, capable” and all of these can be applied to this book as well as to the play. Born in 1906 in Harley Street, the daughter of two doctors, Katherine and Nathaniel Harman, and eldest of a large and clever family, she gives the reader fascinating glimpses of an Edwardian childhood and of the unusually complicated religious, social, and political milieu in which she was brought up. A brilliant career at Oxford, both socially and academically, was followed by a time lecturing for the W.E.A. and then by marriage to Frank Pakenham, later to become Lord Longford. Her active involvement in politics (the story of her long friendship with Hugh Gaitskell is one of the intriguing strands in the book) finally persuaded Frank to become a member of the Labour Party, while he, in his turn, led her to become a member of the Roman Catholic Church. Their obviously close and loving relationship and their delight in their eight talented children (the eldest is Antonia Fraser) only briefly prevented Elizabeth from playing an active part in politics and from developing a full professional career as a writer. Her memoirs therefore give a picture not simply of an engaging and gifted woman but of the changing times of this century. It is an easily read, enjoyable mixture of history and gossip, of family, friends and great figures, and given its many pleasures, the occasional rambling story, indulgent sentimentality, and assumed knowledge of intricate relationships can easily be forgiven.