Elizabeth Douglas-Home

Elizabeth Hester Douglas-Home, Baroness Home of the Hirsel (née Alington; 6 November 1909 – 13 September 1990^[1]) was the wife of Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

She was born in 1909, the third daughter of Cyril Alington, the headmaster of Eton College and chaplain to George V, and his wife, Hon. Hester Margaret Lyttelton (CBE), daughter of George Lyttelton, 4th Baron Lyttelton. Lady Home was the first woman to become a fellow (governor) 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 (1974–90), more names successively in her lifetime than any other once-married only British woman.

Death

She died on 13 September 1990 at the age of 80. Her husband outlived her by just over five years. They had been married for 53 years.

Styles of address

• Miss Elizabeth Alington (1909–1936)
• Lady Dunglass (her husband's courtesy title; 1936–1951)
• The Right Honourable The Countess of Home (1951–1963)
• Lady Douglas-Home (as the wife of a knight; 1963–1974)
• The Right Honourable The Lady Home of the Hirsel (her husband having been given a life peerage; 1974–1990)

References

Bibliography

• Cherie Booth & Cate Haste. (2004). The Goldfish Bowl: Married to the Prime Minister 1955-1997.
• The Guinness Book of Records. 1985.