[1][2] She spent her early years in Cairo, and later wrote of her mother and her aunts that they were "true Victorians: not in a general way frightened of murder and sudden death, but perfectly terrified of insects".
[1] Napier was educated at Downe House School, in Berkshire, which was then under the headship of its founder Olive Willis, and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she graduated (like her sister Alethea three years later) BA in modern history.
[1] Aged 22, Priscilla Hayter married Trevylyan Michael Napier (born 21 June 1901, Kensington London), a Royal Navy officer and a scion of the Napier family of Merchiston.
After her husband was killed on active service in 1940, Priscilla Napier was left to bring up their son and two daughters.
She then developed a writing career based on studies of her dead husband's family.