Eliza Pakenham

Eliza Pakenham is a member of a well-known Anglo-Irish family. She's the only daughter of Valerie and Thomas Pakenham, 8th Earl and Countess of Longford. Her father is an historian and arborist and her mother is a writer. Her paternal grandfather Frank was the Lord Longford who was a Labour minister and prisoner activist; her grandmother Elizabeth Longford was one of the first women to stand for Parliament, and the writer of famed biographies of the Duke of Wellington and Queen Victoria. Other members of her family are award-winning authors and historians. She read English at Oxford University and is married, with three children. Eliza wanted to learn more about the subjects of the paintings hanging on the walls of the old family home, Tullynally Castle in County Westmeath, Ireland, a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle. Many of them were military and naval commanders during the Napoleonic era. She searched through suitcases, trunks, and attics full of letters and diaries to research and write her first book Soldier, Sailor: An Intimate Portrait of an Irish Family (2013). She had previously worked in publishing for Quartet Books, and attempted a novel that has never been published.