Callaghan was educated at Maidstone Grammar School for Girls, then studied cookery at Battersea College of Domestic Science.

At the same time, she studied economics at a University of London extension course in Eltham, with future Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell as tutor.

In 1969, Callaghan became the chair of the board of governors of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.

They retired to a farm in Ringmer, East Sussex, where she kept pigs and he kept cows and sheep, and grew barley.

In July 2001, when her condition had deteriorated, she entered a care home in nearby Burgess Hill, West Sussex, where her husband visited her every day until her death on 15 March 2005,[1] by which time they had been married for 66 years and together for well over 70.