Her mother and two sisters, Christine and Diana also wrote and they created a large number of books and many of them were on the theme of horses.

Her father, Harold Pullein-Thompson, had the Military Cross and her mother, Joanna Cannan, was a prolific and successful author.

She was the second child as she had an elder brother who would adopt his mother's name to be a successful playwright of comedies as Denis Cannan.

[2] In time they would describe their country childhood in their joint autobiography Fair Girls and Grey Horses (2014).

[2] When she was fifteen and her sisters were fourteen they abandoned education and they started a riding school in wartime Britain.

Josephine was vice president of the Woodland Hunt Branch of the British Pony Club.