Why did Lord Longford always champion Myra Hindley

A. The recently deceased Lord L was a man of great principle. He was often- and mistakenly - regarded as a dotty, bumbling old fool, but was totally unconcerned with the odium heaped upon him by the Press and public. Longford visited Hindley many times in prison and got to know her well. He often described her as 'a good religious woman', saying that it was barbaric to keep her in prison. He claimed that she had only briefly been influenced by Ian Brady - and that led to the appalling Moors Murders in the mid-1960s.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Q. But he was just a liberal trendy

A. No - he can't be pigeon-holed so easily. Lord Hailsham, the former Lord Chancellor and an old political adversary as well, said of Longford: 'His concern for the outcasts of society is perfectly genuine, and even when one is most exasperated at the impracticality of some of his demands or the apparent irresponsibility of some of his behaviour, one is glad from the bottom of one's heart that there exists in the world a man so single-hearted that he is prepared to espouse such hopeless causes.' Longford was born and brought up a conventional aristocrat, a Protestant, a Conservative and a Unionist with scarcely a drop of Irish blood in him despite his family's Irish inheritance. He died a socialist, a Roman Catholic, and an Irish Nationalist.

Q. Brief biog

A. He was born Francis Aungier Pakenham on 5 December 1905, second son of the 5th Earl of Longford - killed in the First World War - and the great-great grandson of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. He attended New College, Oxford, gaining first-class honours in philosophy, politics and economics. He shared digs with Hugh Gaitskell, later leader of the Labour Party.

Q. Whose politics he supported

A. No. Young Frank Pakenham was regarded as one of the Conservative Party's bright young hopefuls. He then became a leader writer on the Daily Mail and went on to lecture at the London School of Economics, working in the evenings at a boys' club in London's East End. Then came two years as a research secretary at Conservative Central Office, specialising in social questions.

Q. So when did his political conversion happen

A. It started when he married Elizabeth Harman, an outstanding, beautiful and socialist history graduate in 1931. His full conversion came five years later when he attended a Mosley Fascist meeting at Oxford. The only vocal opposition came from left-wingers - whom the Mosleyite thugs then beat up. Longford waded in to their defence and received a bad beating. Soon after, he joined the Labour Party and represented the party on Oxford City Council.

Q. And up the political ladder

A. Yes - and remarkably so. By 1941 he became assistant to William Beveridge and helped produce the Welfare State report. He stood for Parliament in 1945, was beaten, but then appointed a life peer - Baron Pakenham of Cowley. From there he became a government Whip and, also, a war under-secretary, then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Civil Aviation Minister and First Lord of the Admiralty. He was also one of the few socialists to have a top job in the City - including chairmanship of the National Bank from 1955-63. He became the 7th Lord Longford on the death of his brother in 1961.

Q. What about the Lord Porn title

A. This was a press nickname coined in 1972, when he published the Pornography Report, which challenged the view of the permissive society that pornography did no harm. He took the advice of a committee that called for a new law on obscenity and recommended that sex and violence should be obscenities.

Q. And a prison reformer, too

A. Longford had been an official prison visitor since before the Second World War and called for many reforms. By far his most controversial campaign was his persistent call to parole Hindley. In 1985, when the Parole Board refused to release her after 20 years in jail, he called the decision 'barbaric'.

Q. And is there an heir to the earldom

A. Yes - Lord and Lady Longford had four sons and four daughters. The new earl is Thomas Pakenham, who was studying exotic trees in a remote area of Madagascar, unaware that his father had died. His daughter Eliza Chisholm helped find him after a series of phone calls. She said: 'I spoke to various Madagascans who were all deeply sympathetic, but they had no idea where he was. I think he's out in a pretty wild place. He is writing his world tree book and I imagine that he is looking for the grandest trees in the country.' An interesting family.

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By Steve Cunningham