Shiela Grant Duff - Early Years

Early Years

The youngest daughter of Adrian Grant Duff and The Hon.Ursula Lubbock, Shiela Grant Duff was born in the Grosvenor Square home of her maternal grandfather, Sir John Lubbock on Whit Sunday. The youngest of four children, her paternal grandfather was Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff. Her father, who served as Army Secretary to the Cabinet from 1911–1913 ( alongside First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill), was later a commanding officer in the The Royal Highland Regiment, and died leading his regiment's attack at the First Battle of the Aisne in 1914. The young Shiela Grant Duff grew up understanding that her father's central contribution, as creator of the British Government's War Book, to the successful prosecution of World War I had been overlooked.

At the age of 12 Grant Duff attended St Paul's Girls' School in London, where she befriended Diana Hubback and Peggy Garnett. Though Garnett she met Douglas Jay, who influenced her intellectual development. In 1931 Grant Duff went up to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford where she read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and was tutored by R. G. Collingwood and John Fulton and Isaiah Berlin. Among the friends she made at Oxford were Goronwy Rees, Isaiah Berlin, Christopher Cox and Ian Bowen, and although her closest friendship was with Rees, she remains associated in historical literature with the later German Widerstand figure Adam von Trott zu Solz, then a Rhodes Scholar attending Balliol College who was romantically involved with her friend Diana Hubback.