The irony and the ecstasy of Lady Mary Clive

Deep in a remote valley on the edge of the Black Mountains sits one of the last great witnesses of the 20th century. Lady Mary Clive, who turns 100 on 23 August, shook Kitchener’s hand before the first world war, and heard first-hand accounts of the 1916 Dublin Easter Uprising hours after it happened.

During the 1926 General Strike she served tea to lorry drivers in the same year that she was presented to George V as a debutante. In the 1930s she was a denizen of Fleet Street, one of Lord Beaverbrook’s favourite journalists. Memoirs and biographies streamed from her pen throughout the century. Last December her children’s book, Christmas with the Savages, was Radio 4’s Book of the Week.

Lady Mary is also the lone survivor of an extraordinary brood of writers — the six Pakenham siblings. One of her brothers was the late Lord Longford, the prison reformer. His older brother, whom he succeeded as the Earl of Longford, was an Irish senator, playwright and saviour of Dublin’s Gate Theatre.