Doris May Tayler was born in Persia which is now Iran on October 22, 1919. Her parents were both British. Her father was a clerk at the Imperial Bank of Persia while her mother worked as a nurse. In 1925 her family was lured by a promise of getting rich through maize farming. Her family then moved to a British colony, in Southern Rhodesia which is now Zimbabwe. But the thousand of acres bought by the father promised to yield wealth failed. Her mother wanted to live a civilized so-called perfect Edwardian life while the father did not want to.

She described her childhood as an uneven mix of some pleasure and much pain. She had a brother Harry, her retreat from an otherwise miserable existence she said. Mother obsessed with raising a proper daughter. She enforced a rigid system of rules and hygiene at home. A strict household towards...