Her father, Geoffrey Vaughan Blackstone, CBE, GM, was the Chief Fire Officer for Hertfordshire and her mother, Joanna Vosper, was an actress and model for the House of Worth in Paris.

As a member of Jim Callaghan's Downing Street thinktank, she upset the Foreign Office by criticizing diplomats' lavish lifestyles.

She has served as chairman of the ballet board of the Royal Opera House, the Fabian Society, and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), and has sat on the governing bodies of numerous other organisations.

She is a Labour life peer and sits in the House of Lords, having been created Baroness Blackstone, of Stoke Newington in Greater London, on 18 March 1987.

[9] In January 2013, she became co-chair at the Franco-British Council together with Christian de Boissieu, an organisation which looks to promote better understanding between Britain and France and to contribute to the development of joint action.