Skipwith's granddaughter in her biography Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life repeats her grandmother's claim that the "wedding was considered the most brilliant of the 1907 season.

[5] Her mother, Sophy, whose father was the Marshal of the Russian Nobility, president of the Union of the Nobility of the Russian Provinces, and a Knight of the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky,[1] studied medicine and became a respected surgeon,[6] learned to fly in 1913 and was one of the first female bomber pilots,[7][8] was the only female participant in a motor rally from St. Petersburg to Kiev in 1912, and also published satirical poetry under a pseudonym.

[6] In 1916, Sofia Alekseevna returned from medical service in the Russian military with malaria and two St. George crosses,[9] and after the October Revolution she re-entered Bolshevik Russia and secured the release of her second husband from prison,[10] and subsequently supported him in Paris by driving a taxi.

[14][15] Skipwith was raised in Bath, London, Rome, Budapest (where her stepfather was representing the still recognised Russian Imperial government and where her mother decided she should be "out"[16]), Nice, Paris and finally Dieppe.

[20] On her mother's suggestion, Skipwith qualified as a French and English shorthand-typist at the Ecole Pigier in Dieppe[21] and at 21, after a series of unsatisfactory temporary jobs, became the Duchess of Hamilton's secretary.

This included speaking with her at events on behalf of the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society, and organising the wedding of Margaret and James Drummond-Hay, at which she was one of twelve bridesmaids in rainbow colours.

[22] In her memoirs, she tells of the butler bursting in on her while she was dressing for the pre-wedding dinner, taking no notice of her being "attired in nothing but bra and panties": "'Your Highness', he gasped .

[35] However, on her second trip in mid-May 1940, she was trapped in Paris when the Germans occupied it, and three days before she was to have been smuggled out of the country, was rounded up with other British nationals and sent to an internment camp at Besançon.

[41] During her time in internment, Skipwith repeatedly tried to help people escape,[42] and smuggled messages and cigarettes and other items from Red Cross parcels to the French Resistance, especially after about 250 Polish Jews who had paid for useless certifications of South American citizenship arrived at a separate part of the camp.

[43] She wrote out the list of their names in tiny script on cigarette papers and sent multiple copies via the French Communist Party to Geneva and to Spain, which was supposedly representing the South American countries.

[55] In 1946 Skipwith left the Old Vic to pay more attention to her young son, resumed working for Universal Aunts, and devoted much of her time to the Communist Party.

Her granddaughter's biography explains that she lived with the cousin who had arranged for her to leave occupied Paris, and when she was contemplating starting a boarding house on the Riviera, was hired to run Progressive Tours, a Communist travel agency which in Skipwith's words aimed "to create opportunities for the working people of Britain to meet the ordinary people of other countries – surely the best way to overcome prejudice and intolerance, to counter the threat of another war".

[60] However, her cousin had debilitating headaches from a war injury; when he was given a lobotomy, he soon became mentally incompetent and Skipwith returned to find he had sold their cottage in Gif, outside Paris, at a rock-bottom price and bought two unheated stables.

[69] Shortly after she started working for the Duchess of Hamilton, she assisted in her son Douglas's campaign as Unionist candidate for the impoverished constituency of Govan, in Glasgow, but was shocked by the conditions in which the people lived and more impressed by the incumbent Labour MP.

[70][71] The experience of poverty after her first husband lost his job convinced her of "the injustice of the social set-up, the obviously false division of mankind into class society", whereas he "merely [felt it was] bad luck that we happened to be on the wrong side".

[73] She and her second husband tried to read Marx and Lenin but found them too difficult;[74] she finally joined the Communist Party while interned, as the culmination of political discussions with her roommates.

[75] After repatriation she joined the British Communist Party[76] and was active for years,[77][78] including her work for the travel agency, and in the late 1960s she edited the first issue of Albanian Life magazine[65] and published a book called A Short Guide to the People's Republic of Albania.

[85][86] She was an unembarrassed advocate of birth control, recommending "the cap" to embarrassed visitors and assisting French women in coming to England to be fitted for them by a friend who was a doctor.

[90] In 1985, she received a letter from Yad Vashem indicating that she was being considered for an award as Righteous among the Nations for her efforts to save the Jews at the Vittel internment camp.