Her mother was a First World War Belgian refugee and was living with relatives in the Siltzer family (who were involved in Lancashire textile manufacturing) at the time of her daughter’s birth.

[4] In 1938 Villiers and her older sister Béatrice joined the newly formed Motor Corps of the Belgian Red Cross.

[1] She gathered intelligence on Italian forces based at her home in Jurbise, and on the Germans at her maternal grandfather du Parc’s château in Vlamertinghe, in Flanders.

Her Red Cross association was useful as cover, and she organised a canteen for the poor in Anderlecht, Brussels, which fed 20,000 people over the winter of 1941–2.

[4] With her family already in Britain, Villiers went underground unitl December, using an assumed name with her blond hair dyed black, before sneaking through France, Andorra and Spain where she managed to get a British passport before flying to London from Portugal in March 1943.

[1][4] The couple had two daughters together, Diana Villiers Negroponte and Anne Martin, in addition to Charles's sons from a previous marriage.

[1] In December 1979 she identified a parcel sent to her home from Belgium as a bomb sent by the Provisional IRA, due to her war time training.

[1] She smuggled her husband past picket lines and into buildings during the industrial disputes which broke out at British Steel under his chairmanship.