Georgina Battiscombe
Georgina Battiscombe | |
---|---|
Born | Esther Georgina Harwood[1] 21 November 1905[1][2] Mayfair, London[3] |
Died | 26 February 2006[1][2] | (aged 100)
Occupation | Biographer |
Notable works | Charlotte Mary Yonge: the Story of an Uneventful Life (1943) |
Children | 1[2] |
Georgina Battiscombe (21 November 1905 – 26 February 2006) was a British biographer, specialising mainly in lives from the Victorian era.
She was born Esther Georgina Harwood, the elder daughter of
She was educated at St Michael's School, Oxford, and at
Her best known books were biographies of the Victorian romantic novelist Charlotte Mary Yonge (1943); Catherine Gladstone, the wife of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (1956); English churchman John Keble (1963); and Alexandra of Denmark (1969).[2] The biography of Keble was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.[2][1]
One of the reasons Battiscombe wrote about Queen Alexandra was that she and Alexandra both had the same form of deafness, otosclerosis.[1] Battiscombe was very deaf for a large part of her life, until surgery and a hearing aid corrected this.[1] She said that her experience gave her "some understanding of Alexandra's predicament".[1]
Battiscombe thought that many royal biographies are factually incorrect, and that "so often the unfortunate royalties do not even receive common politeness from those who write about them".[1]
Battiscombe also wrote biographies of
Battiscombe became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1964.[1] She died in 2006, aged 100.[2][1]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Georgina Battiscombe". The Telegraph. 2 March 2006. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Hayter, Alethea (2 March 2006). "Georgina Battiscombe". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/97074. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)