Elizabeth Irving

Dorothea Elizabeth Irving, known professionally and personally as Elizabeth Irving, was born on 14 April 1904 at 1 Upper Woburn Place, London. She came from one of the most distinguished theatrical families in British history, being the daughter of actors H. B. Irving and Dorothea Baird, and the granddaughter of the Victorian stage star Henry Irving. Her older brother, Laurence Irving, went on to become a Hollywood set designer and art director.

Irving received her education at South Hampstead High School and, following the family's relocation to Oxford in 1916, at Oxford High School and later Wycombe Abbey School. She left school at the age of 16 to pursue formal acting training in Oxford and London. Her stage debut had come earlier, however, at the age of 12, when she appeared in The Bells alongside her father. Among her early adult roles were Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a part in Henrik Ibsen's The Pretenders, and a role in George du Maurier's Trilby. She also appeared in A. V. Bramble's 1922 silent film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Shirley.

Irving's Broadway career brought her to New York in 1927, where she appeared in the play The Mystery Ship. On 8 July 1926 she had married Sir Felix Brunner, Baronet, a businessman and son of Sir John Fowler Brunner, 2nd Bt. and Lucy Marianne Vaughan Morgan. The couple had five sons. Following her marriage, Irving withdrew from acting entirely. She became Lady Brunner in 1929 upon the death of her father-in-law, the 2nd baronet. In 1937, she and her husband purchased Greys Court in Oxfordshire, a property they later donated to the National Trust in 1969 while continuing to reside there.

Irving devoted much of her later life to public service. She served as a Justice of the Peace for Oxfordshire beginning in 1946 and held the chairmanship of the National Federation of Women's Institutes from 1951 to 1956. In 1955 she founded the Keep Britain Tidy Group, serving as its President for 19 years from 1966 and subsequently as its senior vice-president. Her contributions to that campaign were recognized in 1964 with her appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She also chaired the Women's Group on Public Welfare for ten years beginning in 1960, chaired the Henley and District Housing Trust, and served on the General Advisory Council of the BBC from 1968 to 1971. The Brunner Buildings at Denman College, the Women's Institute's residential adult education college near Oxford, were named in her honor.

One of her surviving sons, Sir Hugo Brunner KCVO JP, served as Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire from 1996 to 2008. He edited and published his mother's memoir of her childhood, covering the period up to her stage debut, under the title Child of the Theatre, released by Perpetua Press, Oxford, in 2010. Elizabeth Irving, Lady Brunner, OBE, JP, died of heart failure at Greys Court in Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire, on 9 January 2003, at the age of 98.