Anne Grey Barrett was born in December 1927, daughter of Major John Lionel Mackenzie Barrett (d. 1940), of The Tallat, Northleach, Gloucestershire, an officer in the 13th/18th Royal Hussars, and Evelyn Kathleen Frances (1898–1987), daughter of Thomas Stewart Porter, of Clogher Park, County Tyrone (he took his mother's family name, Porter, instead of his father's, Ellison-Macartney, as an heir of the Porter family of Belle Isle, County Longford) Her mother was a descendant of Sir Alan Bellingham, 3rd Baronet. A brother, Christopher, was born in 1930. She was educated at Wroxall Abbey, in Warwickshire.
Since 1969, she has produced a number of books, including biographies and social histories. Her stories usually cover women's heroism through historical events (Debs at War, 1939: The Last Season, The Fishing Fleet).
Personal life
In 1951, she married Michael Charles Cameron Claremont Constantine de Courcy, a journalist and RAF officer, half-brother of John de Courcy, 35th Baron Kingsale. He was killed in a flying accident in 1953, aged 22. She then married, in 1959, barrister Robert Armitage (1921–1998), from a family of landed gentry originally of Milnsbridge House, Huddersfield. Milnsbridge House has been in industrial use for at least a century, and the whole surrounding area is industrial.
Anne de Courcy and Robert Armitage had three children.
