Sally Mary Caroline Belfrage was born in Hollywood, California, on 4 October 1936.[2] Her parents, Cedric Belfrage and Molly Castle, later moved to New York where she studied at the Bronx High School of Science and Hunter College.[2] She returned to England when her parents were deported to London as alleged Communists.[1][2] After her return, she matriculated at the London School of Economics.[1][2] Following graduation, she became a social activist and world traveller.[1] She attended the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, visited China,[4] and worked in 1957 for the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow.[2]
Her books included A Room in Moscow (1958),[5] Flowers of Emptiness: Reflections on an Ashram (1981),[3] The Crack: A Belfast Year (1987, retitled Living with War: A Belfast Year for United States distribution),[6] Un-American Activities: A Memoir of the Fifties (1995),[7] and Freedom Summer (1999).[8] In 1969, she signed a war tax resistance vow, along with 447 other American writers and editors. It was published in the January 30, 1969 edition of the New York Post.[1]
Belfrage lived most of her life in London, where she died at Middlesex Hospital from lung cancer (adenocarcinoma) in 1994, at age 57.[2][9]
