Judith Márffy-Mantuano Hare, Countess of Listowell (1903–2003)

Judith de Marffy-Mantuano was born on her family's estate in Kapasvár, Hungary, the daughter of an aristocratic Austro-Hungarian diplomat. In 1926, she won a scholarship to study at the London School of Economics, where she first met William "Billy" Hare, the future 5th Earl of Listowel. She went home to Budapest in need of funds and decided to earn a living as a journalist, writing for the weekly Magyarsâr and the daily Nemzeti Usjag. She returned to London as a foreign correspondent. In 1933, she was asked to travel to Ottawa to cover the World Economic Conference, but instead married Billy Hare. They travelled around Europe together and then separately for the rest of the 1930s. They divorced, but Lady Listowel was unable to remarry due to her Roman Catholic beliefs. She continued to write for newspapers and also became an renowned author of nonfiction books such as This I Have Seen (1943), Crusader in the Secret War (1952), an account of the activities of Jan Kowalewski during World War II, The Modern Hostess (1961), The Making of Tanganyika (1965), Dusk on the Danube (1969), a volume of short stories about Hungarian society in the 1920s, and A Hapsburg Tragedy: Crown Prince Rudolf (1978).