Priscilla Napier
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Priscilla Napier (5 October 1908 – 10 October 1998) was an English writer, specializing in biography.
Born in Oxford in 1908, Priscilla Hayter was the daughter of Sir William Hayter, an adviser to the Egyptian government, and his wife, Alethea Slessor, daughter of a Hampshire rector. Her brother, Sir William Goodenough Hayter (1906–1995), became British ambassador to the Soviet Union and Warden of New College, Oxford, while her sister, Alethea Hayter (1911–2006), was a literary biographer. [1][2] She spent her early years in Cairo, and later wrote of her mother and her aunts that they were "true Victorians: not in a general way frightened of murder and sudden death, but perfectly terrified of insects".[1]
Napier was educated at Downe House School, in Berkshire, which was then under the headship of its founder Olive Willis, and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she graduated (like her sister Alethea three years later) BA in modern history.[1]
