Battiscombe, E. Georgina 1905–2006

(Esther Georgina Harwood Battiscombe, Gina Harwood)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born November 21, 1905, in London, England; died February 26, 2006. Author. Battiscombe was best known as a writer of biographies of important nineteenth-century figures. The daughter of a Liberal Member of Parliament, she was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1927. Marrying an older military man five years later, she followed him to Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania and subsequently gained an interest in the African continent. Returning to Britain in 1935 after her husband left the military, she worked as a clerk at a cathedral in Durham. Then, when England entered World War II and her husband rejoined the army, Bat-tiscombe did her part for the Red Cross. It was during the war that Battiscombe published her first biography, Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life (1943). After the war, she and her husband settled back down in England and Battiscombe continued to write. She also assisted churches in Durham and Oxford by working on the diocesan committee during this time. She won the James Tait Black Prize for Biography for her best-known work, John Keble: A Study in Limitations, which was published in 1964. Battiscombe was also the author of such biographical works as Queen Alexandra (1969) and The Spencers of Althorp (1984), as well as such other titles as English Picnics (1949) and the edited poetry collection Winter Song (1992).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), March 2, 2006, p. 69.