Elizabeth Douglas-Home, Baroness Home of the Hirsel

Who was Elizabeth Douglas-Home, Baroness Home of the Hirsel?

Elizabeth Hester Douglas-Home, Baroness Home of the Hirsel was the wife of the British Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

She was born in 1909, the third daughter of the Very Revd Cyril Alington, the headmaster of Eton College and chaplain to King George V, and his wife, Hon. Hester Margaret Lyttelton, daughter of George, 4th Lord Lyttelton. Lady Home was the first woman to become a fellow of Eton.

She married Alec Douglas-Home in 1936.

Thanks to her husband acquiring and renouncing various titles she had, according to The Guinness Book of Records, more names successively in her lifetime than any other once-married only British woman.

Her names in order were:

Miss Elizabeth Alington

Lady Dunglass

The Rt Hon The Countess of Home

Lady Douglas-Home

The Rt Hon The Lady Home of the Hirsel

She died in September 1990 at the age of 80, her husband outliving her by just over five years. They had been married for 54 years.