[3] Madeleine Ebel was born on 1 February 1912,[4] the eldest daughter of Clement Ebel, managing director of a firm of interior decorators, and met John Bingham at a secretarial college, where he was learning shorthand and typing to prepare for a planned post as private secretary to a millionaire.
She worked at Blenheim Palace in administration and later in the Special Operations Executive, when she was based at the HQ in Baker Street and "kept a drawer of suicide tablets for agents".
She published her autobiography Peers and Plebs: Two Families in a Changing World in 1975, in which she described the contrast between her and her husband's backgrounds: hers Catholic, with mid-European roots, and his firmly Northern-Irish protestant.
The book only covers her life up to 1937 and the birth of her son: she makes no reference to her or her husband's work with the security service.
[5][6][7] Her books included biographies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Sir John Vanbrugh, Henry Irving and Herbert Beerbohm Tree,[2] and wide range of further titles including Scotland under Mary Stuart : an account of everyday life, Princess Lieven : Russian intriguer, Earls and girls : dramas in high society, The passionate poet : a romantic story based upon Lord Byron's loves and adventures, and How to be a good daughter-in-law.