Georgina Battiscombe was a British biographer, specialising mainly in lives from the Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

.

She was born Esther Georgina Harwood, the elder daughter of George Harwood

George Harwood

George Harwood was a British businessman and Liberal Party politician. He was born the second son of Richard Harwood who founded a firm of cotton spinners and who was at one time Mayor of Bolton and twice Mayor of Salford....

, a former clergyman, Liberal

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 for his home town of Bolton

Bolton

Bolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...

, Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, master cotton spinner, and an author and barrister. Her family was steeped in politics: her maternal grandfather, Sir Alfred Hopkinson

Alfred Hopkinson

Sir Alfred Hopkinson was an English lawyer, academic and politician who served as a Member of Parliament for two three-year periods, separated by nearly thirty years....

, KC (the first Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University), three uncles, and her stepfather, John Murray

John Murray (MP for Leeds West)

John Murray was a Scottish civil servant, university administrator and Liberal Party politician.-Family and education:...

 (Principal of the University College of the South West of England, Exeter), all became MPs.

She was educated at St Michael's School, Oxford, and at Lady Margaret Hall, and once considered a political career herself. In 1932 she married Christopher Battiscombe (d.1964), a lieutenant-colonel in the Grenadier Guards

Grenadier Guards

The Grenadier Guards is an infantry regiment of the British Army. It is the most senior regiment of the Guards Division and, as such, is the most senior regiment of infantry. It is not, however, the most senior regiment of the Army, this position being attributed to the Life Guards...

. For a time they lived in Zanzibar, where Colonel Battiscombe was Secretary to the Sultan. They then lived at Durham before moving to the Henry III Tower at Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...

 as Colonel Battiscombe became honorary secretary of the Society of the Friends of St George's from 1958 to 1960.

Her best known books were biographies of the Victorian romantic novelist Charlotte Mary Yonge

Charlotte Mary Yonge

Charlotte Mary Yonge , was an English novelist, known for her huge output, now mostly out of print.- Life :Charlotte Mary Yonge was born in Otterbourne, Hampshire, England, on 11 August 1823 to William Yonge and Fanny Yonge, née Bargus. She was educated at home by her father, studying Latin, Greek,...

 (1943); Catherine Gladstone

Catherine Gladstone

Catherine Glynne Gladstone was the wife of British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone for 59 years, until his death in 1898.-Family:...

, the wife of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

 (1956); English churchman John Keble

John Keble

John Keble was an English churchman and poet, one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, and gave his name to Keble College, Oxford.-Early life:...

 (1963); and Alexandra of Denmark

Alexandra of Denmark

Alexandra of Denmark was the wife of Edward VII of the United Kingdom...

 (1969). The biography of Keble was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize

James Tait Black Memorial Prize

Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...

. Battiscombe was drawn to the subject of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, because she suffered from the same form of deafness, otosclerosis

Otosclerosis

Otosclerosis is an abnormal growth of bone near the middle ear. It can result in hearing loss.-Clinical description:Otosclerosis can result in conductive and/or sensorineural hearing loss...

, that had afflicted the queen, and was very deaf from the age of about 20 until she was 50. Two operations and a modern hearing aid

Hearing aid

A hearing aid is an electroacoustic device which typically fits in or behind the wearer's ear, and is designed to amplify and modulate sound for the wearer. Earlier devices, known as "ear trumpets" or "ear horns", were passive funnel-like amplification cones designed to gather sound energy and...

 entirely overcame this disability, but, as she said, it gave her "some understanding of Alexandra's predicament." As a royal biographer, she was appalled by the way in which members of the Royal Family were frequently treated, decrying the sensational and the scandalous, rightly considering many royal biographies ill-informed, and noting that "so often the unfortunate royalties do not even receive common politeness from those who write about them".

Battiscombe also wrote biographies of Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti

Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...

 (1965) and Shaftesbury

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury KG , styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was an English politician and philanthropist, one of the best-known of the Victorian era and one of the main proponents of Christian Zionism.-Youth:He was born in London and known informally as Lord Ashley...

 (1974), and her other titles include Two on Safari (1946); English Picnics (1949); Reluctant Pioneer: The Life of Elizabeth Wordsworth (1978); The Spencers of Althorp (1984); and Winter Song, a book of poems (1992). She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Royal Society of Literature

The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...

in 1964. She died in 2006, aged 100.

External links

Obituary in The Guardian

Obituary in The Telegraph

Obituary in The Times