Sonia Melchett was born in British India on 6 September 1928, the eldest daughter of Lt-Col Roland Harris Graham and Kathleen (née Dunbar) Graham, of The Lodge, Bridge, Kent.
[1] Her father, of a County Fermanagh family,[2] was educated at Cambridge University and Trinity College, Dublin, and served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Second World War.
Her younger sister Daphne married Major Anthony Henry Ivor Kinsman and became an actress, broadcaster and writer.
She was the presenter of the BBC news programme Look North and wrote the book Pawn takes Castle.
Sonia Graham married the Honourable Julian Edward Alfred Mond, younger son of Henry Mond, 2nd Baron Melchett and Amy Gwen Mond Baroness Melchett (née Wilson) on 26 April 1947, and became Lady Melchett on the death of her father-in-law on 22 January 1949.