"She would take the old patriarchal myths and tear them apart and remake them." Judith Kazantzis was born on August 14, 1940 in Oxford, England but grew up in Sussex. She was the fourth child of Elizabeth Pakenham, a biographer and historian. Her parents in 1961 became Lord and Lady Longford and in England they became known as the "literary Longfords." She studied history at the Somerville College at the University of Oxford and married Alec Kazantzis, a maritime lawyer. However, they divorced in 1982 and he died in 2014. After sixteen years she married Irving Weinman an American lawyer and writer. Judith was a well-known feminist poet who began writing as an escape from her housewife responsibilities. "I began to write to remedy despair of a young housebound mother." Her career spanned for almost four decades writing about 12 collections of poetry and many essays and novels like "Of Love and Terror." Her writing spoke abut the power dynamic between men and women and the abuse of power against weak individuals. Her themes and style of writing resonated with many women who in the 1970s were taking part in the new feminism movement. One that allowed women to express their emotions toward patriarchy. She wanted to portray women as complex rather than the conventional one dimensional characterizations. In her volume"The Odysseus Poems" she re imagined Homer's epic tale and included a man and a woman. Even in her poem "Queen Clytemnestra" she did not just portray her character as a mean "bitch" as she would say but instead she portrayed her as any human being who had strong passions and good reasons to be and act the way she did. She would also write about love, motherhood, and aging like in her novel "The Mary Stan-ford Disaster." She later turned to political activism and founded an organization called British Writers in Support of Palestine with the help of Mr. Weinman and Naomi Foyle. Her activist work was inspired by her opposition to the conservative polices of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and to the United Sates who "who introduced her to new politics and new landscapes." Unfortunately her death was confirmed by Andy Croft.

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