NANCY ASTOR

American-bom Lady Astor, England's answer to Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton, invaded Parliament's all-male sanctum

Flashback

Nancy Astor, the American aristocrat who was the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament, resigned her seat in the House of Commons 50 years ago. She had taken over her husband's constituency after a by-election in 1919 when the death of his father, the first Viscount Astor, elevated him to the House of Lords. According to Winston Churchill, "Parliament has never been the same since."

Lady Astor wasn't so much a pistol as a blunderbuss. The writer Harold Nicolson said debating her was "like playing squash with a dish of scrambled eggs." When she wasn't spraying her opponents with buckshot, she simply sprayed them: she once spit at Marxist journalist Claud Cockburn for suggesting she was among the architects of appeasement.

Born into a fading Virginia plantocracy as Nannie Langhome— her sister Irene married painter Charles Dana Gibson and was his star model, known as "the Gibson Girl"—she was long the grande dame, and especially formidable-looking in her tricorne hat. If she'd been less headstrong she probably never would have endured the boys'-club atmosphere of the House of Commons. It was Lady Astor who told Churchill that if she were his wife she'd poison his tea, to which he famously replied, "My dear Nancy, if I were your husband I'd drink it."

TOBY YOUNG