[1] She was the daughter of Lt.-Col. Adrian Sydney Morton Porter OStJ, a King's Messenger,[2] and the author Rose Henniker Heaton.
[3] Her grandfather was the postal reformer Sir John Henniker Heaton, 1st Baronet.
[4] She married, firstly, the renowned Oxford classicist Courtenay Edward Stevens in 1938.
[4] During the Second World War she worked in the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office.
[5] Leila Buckley translated works between English, German, Italian, French, Latin and ancient Greek.