In 1988 she became special advisor to Nigel Lawson, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and remained in the role when John Major took over the following year.

[1] That June she was appointed OBE, and she was considered likely to become chancellor of the exchequer herself in the future; however, these hopes were ended less than a year later by her sudden death.

Her father, Theodore Thomas Schofield, was a dentist; her mother was Sybil Elsie, née Saunders.

She was educated at Wycombe Abbey before studying economics at Girton College, Cambridge.

They had two sons and two daughters, including Alice Walpole, Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Luxembourg.