She spent her early years in Washington, D.C., where her father was a correspondent for Reuters.
In the early 1950s the family returned to Britain, where her father became editor of the Daily Mail.
She and her sister attended St Philomena's Catholic High School for Girls in Carshalton in the London Borough of Sutton.
After her parents' marriage broke down, she and her siblings moved with their mother to Cornwall.
[1] In 1962, aged 17, she moved to Headley, Surrey to live with her father, and studied journalism, eventually joining the Sunday Express as a reporter.