Judith, Countess of Listowel (12 July 1903 – 15 July 2003) was a Hungarian-born journalist and anti-Communist writer who was married to William Hare, 5th Earl of Listowel from 1933 to 1945.

Biography

She was born Judit Márffy-Mantuano de Versegh et Leno on the family estate in Kaposvár, Hungary, on 12 July 1903. She was the daughter of Rodolfo Mantuano (1869–1940), an economic adviser in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who acquired the title and estates of the Hungarian Márffy family in 1902 and was later known as Rezső (Raoul) de Márffy-Mantuano; and the sister of Tamás Márffy. In 1926, she won a scholarship to study economic history at the London School of Economics (graduating in 1929), where she met "Billy" Hare, a lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps, from 1931 the 5th Earl of Listowel and a Labour Party peer, whom she married in Budapest in 1933. The couple were ill-fitted due to differences in worldview: she was a conservative Catholic, while his convictions were socialist and atheist. They separated in 1938 and the Countess never re-married. She is said to have benefitted from her husband's political network.

In the 1920s, she wrote a volume of short stories about Hungarian society. After her graduation in 1929, she worked as a journalist in England for the Hungarian newspapers Nemzeti Újság and Pester Lloyd until 1940. In 1932, she interviewed Hitler's early American patron and a Nazi Party chief, Ernst Hanfstaengl, on economic matters, before he fell from favour in 1933. In 1934, she returned to Germany with her husband and attempted to investigate the Nazi concentration camps, which resulted in their names being put on the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B..

She and her husband, then Under-Secretary of State for India, divorced in 1945, the year he was appointed Postmaster General of the United Kingdom in the Labour government of Clement Attlee. They had one daughter, Deirdre, later Baroness Grantley (born 1935).

From October 1944 to September 1954, she published the weekly news bulletin East Europe as a joint effort with the two wartime commanders of the Second Department of Polish General Staff (military intelligence and counterintelligence) in exile, Jan Kowalewski and Jerzy Niezbrzycki. It appeared as East Europe. Bulletin of Seven East European Countries (S.E.E.C. Bulletin) between 1944–50, as East Europe and Soviet Russia between 1950–53, and as Soviet Orbit during 1954. In total, 493 issues of the title were produced over the ten years of existence. Due to the bulletin's anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propaganda, she was banned from entering Hungary until 1964. She travelled to Austria and crossed the border illegally on 4 November 1956 to cover the events of the Hungarian uprising,

Works

  • This I Have Seen (1943; second edition 1945) – an account of her travels with her husband
  • Crusader in the Secret War (1952) – on the activities of the Polish intelligence officer Jan Kowalewski during World War II
  • The Golden Tree: The Story of Peter, Tomi, and Their Family Typifies the Enduring Spirit of Hungary (1958)
  • Manual of Modern Manners: A Practical Up-to-date Guide for All Occasions (1959)
  • The Modern Hostess: Entertaining with Ease and Economy on All Occasions (1961)
  • The Making of Tanganyika (1965; second edition 1968)
  • Dusk on the Danube (1969)
  • “Kenya Today” (1969) – a 12-page article in Progress: the Unilever quarterly, vol. 2, with a preface by Jomo Kenyatta)
  • Amin (1973)
  • The Other Livingstone (1974)
  • A Habsburg Tragedy: Crown Prince Rudolf (1978)

References

Bibliography

  • Portraits of Judith Hare at the National Portrait Gallery