Irving left school at 16 to study acting in Oxford and London, making her stage debut aged 12 in The Bells, in which her father had a leading role.

Her early roles as an adult actress were as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in Henrik Ibsen's The Pretenders and in George du Maurier's Trilby.

After her marriage Irving gave up acting, and became Lady Brunner in 1929 on the death of her husband's father, the 2nd baronet.

One of her three surviving sons is Sir Hugo Brunner KCVO JP, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, England, between 1996 and 2008.

He edited her posthumous account of her childhood to the point when she made her stage debut and published it, with a summary of the rest of her life, in 2010 as Child of the Theatre (Perpetua Press, Oxford).