"Able, articulate and beautiful", in the words of The New York Times, she was "the Zuleika Dobson of her day, with undergraduates and even dons tumbling over one another to fall in love with her".

[2] A few years after her graduation, on 3 November 1931, she married Frank Pakenham,[3] later 7th Earl of Longford, who died in August 2001.

The New York Times, in its review of The Pebbled Shore, called Lady Longford "easily the best writer in what is predominantly a literary family".

[2] She and her husband were both devout Roman Catholic converts, Lady Longford having been raised a Unitarian, and avid social reformers.

Through the war she had sought selection at Birmingham King's Norton until she felt compelled to cease her candidacy upon her sixth pregnancy in 1944; the seat was a Labour gain in 1945 by 12,000 votes.