Biography

Daughter of John Brophy.

She was sent down from university after being discovered with a man in her room for sexual purposes - something she later claimed to be very proud of.

Her husband, Michael Levy, became the director of the National Gallery and was eventually knighted for his services to the arts, making her Lady Levy.

In 1963, she was commissioned by the BBC to write and deliver a radio talk on the then-recent political scandal popularly known as "the Profumo Affair". She was paid in full for her essay, but the actual broadcasting of it was abruptly canceled. She published it instead, and the essay later appeared in her book "Don't Never Forget". In it, she said that the scandal had been easily the most interesting thing to have happened in British public life for many years - which, she added, was exactly why so many establishment figures had come forward to say that it was all very boring.

She was a vociferous Animal Rights campaigner, one of the earliest among prominent personalities in the UK; her novel "Hackenfeller's Ape" is, in part, intended as propaganda for the cause. She was also a strict vegetarian (although also a heavy smoker), an ardent feminist and openly bisexual, although her marriage to Michael Levy was a happy one which endured for over forty years.

[on gender equality] I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on believing that some men are my equals.