The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography
The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography was established in 2003 in affectionate memory of Elizabeth Longford, the acclaimed biographer, and is sponsored by Flora Fraser and Peter Soros.This £5,000 prize is awarded annually for a historical biography published in the preceding year, and is presented by Lady Antonia Fraser. No unsolicited submissions are accepted.
About Elizabeth Longford
Elizabeth Longford (1906-2002) was born Elizabeth Harman. She married Frank Pakenham, later Earl of Longford, in 1931. For some years a writer for the Daily Express and the Sunday Times, she was also a biographer and historian and continued to write well into her nineties. Her many publications include Victoria, which appeared in 1964, a two-volume biography of Wellington, Churchill, The Queen Mother: A biography, Elizabeth R, and Royal Throne: The Future of the Monarchy, which was published in 1993.
The ELHB 2011
Philip Ziegler received £5,000 for Edward Heath – The Authorised Biography (HarperPress).
Philip Ziegler was born in 1929 and educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. After national service in the Royal Artillery he joined the Foreign Service and served in Vientiane, Paris, Pretoria and Bogotá. By this time he had written biographies of the Duchess of Dino and the British Prime Minister, Henry Addington. In 1967 he resigned from the Foreign Service to join the publishers, William Collins. After becoming editor-in-chief in 1979 he retired to become a full-time writer.
His biographies include King William IV, Lord Melbourne, Lady Diana Cooper, Lord Mountbatten, King Edward VIII, Harold Wilson, Rupert Hart-Davis, Osbert Sitwell and Edward Heath (HarperPress). He is currently at work on a biography of Laurence Olivier. He has also written a study of the Black Death and a history of Baring’s Bank.
From 1979 to 1985 he was Chairman of the London Library, and he has also been Chairman of the Society of Authors and the Public Lending Right Advisory Committee. In 1991 he was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Historical Society. He lives in London and is married, with three children and ten grand-children.
Judges: Roy Foster, Lady Antonia Fraser DBE, Flora Fraser, David Gilmour, Munro Price.
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