In 1935 she was awarded a French Government travelling scholarship and gained her Master of Arts from the Sorbonne, Paris.
She appeared as an official French-English interpreter at more than 30 international conferences over ten years, including Colombo Plan meetings.
[3] As Lady Kerr, she forged a formidable reputation for snobbery:[4][5] in private, Gough Whitlam called her 'Fancy Nancy'.
[9] She insisted on being addressed 'Your Excellency',[10] and reinstated the requirement for women to curtsy to her, which Lady (Alison) Kerr had dispensed with.
[12] She was privy to her husband's thoughts and anxieties as the 1975 constitutional crisis developed, but in his autobiography Matters for Judgement (1978) Sir John Kerr strongly denied she had either dissuaded him from warning the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam that he was going to dismiss him, or that she herself had a political axe to grind.
[9] The Kerrs moved to England in 1977 after the widespread public criticism of his acceptance of the ambassadorship to UNESCO, a post he was forced to relinquish before taking it up.