"[1][2][3] Their father, Griffith Robert Poyntz Llewellyn, was dashing, popular and extravagant; his lack of caution was to have disastrous consequences, and he lost the family fortune on horses and houses when Hermione was thirteen.

The day she returned to England, she found Ranfurly seated on the sofa in her London flat, reading the Sporting Life; the two immediately became engaged, and were married on 17 January 1939.

Cutting short their trip, they returned to London, where a telegram awaited them from Dan's Yeomanry regiment, the Sherwood Rangers, telling him to report to duty in Nottinghamshire.

[8] However, Hermione ignored the rules, and in February 1940 managed to obtain a passage to Egypt from a shady London travel agent, arriving in Palestine two weeks later.

[1] Determined not to be separated from her husband, she jumped ship from the RMS Empress of Britain at Cape Town, and succeeded in obtaining an aeroplane ticket back to Egypt by implying to a travel agent that she was a spy on a secret mission.

[1][10] On arrival in Cairo, Lady Ranfurly lay low in the flat of her friends Pamela and Patrick Hore-Ruthven, but gradually her return became known.

Despite continued opposition from the Army, who failed in an attempt to have British ambassador Sir Miles Lampson remove her passport,[11] she became the highly efficient secretary to George Pollock, the head of the SOE.

[10][12] At first pleased with her job, she quickly became concerned about the SOE's actions, intentions, and dubious security and finances,[13] and considered that the organisation was working "across, if not against, the war effort".

Wavell could take no direct action since SOE did not come under the War Office, but sharing her concerns, he asked her to pass on any documents that aroused her suspicion.

[10][12][13] In April 1941, Dan Ranfurly was reported missing after the Battle of Tobruk, and Hermione had no knowledge about whether he was living or dead until she received a letter from him five months later.

[1][7][14] Between 1941 and 1944, Hermione Ranfurly lived in Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Algiers,[7] and met many of famous names who passed through the region, including Lady Diana Cooper, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Sir Walter Monckton, Gaston Palewski, and Noël Coward.

[18] Hermione was well-positioned for more noteworthy encounters: she taught Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt to dance the Boomps-a-Daisy, and received Marshal Josip Broz Tito for tea: "he was short and stocky and dressed to kill" according to the hostess.

[1] In November 1944, Hermione Ranfurly accepted General Wilson's request that she continue as his secretary when he moved to Washington, D.C. to be head of the British Joint Staff Mission.

[20] At the end of the war, Dan Ranfurly obtained a job in insurance at Lloyd's of London, and later farmed in Buckinghamshire, while Hermione attempted to put her wartime letters and diaries in order while seated on the sitting room floor.