Her father, John Cardew Wood was a colonel for the Royal Engineers and his mother was Vera Marion, née Kells.
Her family returned to England in 1930 and settled in Beaconsfield, where she attended Oakdene School, where she developed a flair for languages.
[1] Having learned Hindi and English as a child, Crampton studied German and French at St Hugh's College, Oxford, between 1943 and 1946 and during her lifetime she spoke nine languages.
Her role was primarily to translate documents of the Nazi doctors who conducted experiments on the wartime prisoners.
[1] Crampton went on to be a commercial translator, travelling around the world and working for clients such as NATO and British American Tobacco Company.