Elizabeth Pakenham CBE (otherwise known as Elizabeth Longford) was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a lifelong socialist, and the author of several hugely acclaimed biographies. She wrote a celebrated two-volume biography of Wellington, and biographies of Winston Churchill and the Queen Mother. VICTORIA was her second book.

She had eight children with her husband Frank Pakenham, among them historians Lady Antonia Fraser and Thomas Pakenham. She died on 23 October 2002.