Word: longford
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...grim story has been told before, but never with such sweep and grieving comprehension. Part of the reason is new information, part is the skill and lineage of the author. Thomas Pakenham's mother, the Countess of Longford, is the biographer of Victoria and Wellington. His sister is Antonia Fraser, biographer of Cromwell, Mary Queen of Scots and Charles II. Pakenham was able to prowl the great houses of Britain in search of long-lost letters, papers and diaries, took time to learn Dutch and Afrikaans, and early in his eight years of research recorded the memories...
Lady Antonia, a lithe blonde, has been married since 1956 to Tory M.P. Hugh Fraser. Her father is the Earl of Longford, a sturdy Roman Catholic peer and tireless moralizer whose antismut campaigns have earned him the nickname "Lord Porn." She is an avid collector-of white dresses (she has 100), and of personages literary, theatrical and political. Her companions have included Author Norman Mailer, Actor Robert Stephens and Lord Lambton, the Tory M.P. who quit Parliament last year after being photographed in bed with a call girl...
...current biographers go, Lady Antonia Fraser is not necessarily the best, but she is certainly the prettiest. It is a title she would not relish, for she is to scholarship born and bred. Her father, the Earl of Longford, a sometime leader of the House of Lords, is also the author of a number of books on topics that range from banking to philosophy. Her mother Elizabeth is a distinguished biographer of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington. One sister is a novelist; another turns out textbooks. A younger brother is a historian...
...concluding that pornography is harmful, the Longford Committee was much impressed by the testimony of people who claimed to have been corrupted or made criminals by sexual material. One 17-year-old boy, for example, after seeing a sex film, "rushed round his home in a frenzy and then went out and sexually assaulted a girl of five." Longford, who was dubbed "Lord Porn" by the London press, agrees with critics of his methods that "it is not always or even often possible to produce conclusive evidence that any social factor leads to a particular result." However...
...corrupt." Because this effect is difficult to prove, the committee would change the wording to that which would "outrage contemporary standards of decency or humanity accepted by the public at large." It would then be up to juries to decide on contemporary standards. "Justice may be fallible," Lord Longford admits. "But opinion does express itself to the times through the jury." The report also urged that heavier fines and jail sentences be meted out and that it "be illegal to show children under educational auspices any material which may not be shown in a public place...