She was born in Geneva, Switzerland to an English father and American-Swiss mother. She was brought up mainly in Brussels, and educated there, at Somerville College, Oxford and University College, London. During World War II she worked at Bletchley Park as a WAAF in intelligence, later completing her university degree. She then worked for a time in London as a literary journalist and scholar.

She has been married three times: to Rodney Bax, whom she met at Bletchley Park; to the poet Jerzy Pietrkiewicz; and briefly to Claude Brooke. She shared the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction for Such (1966). On separating from Pietrkiewicz in 1968 she took a position at the University of Paris, Vincennes.

She is known also as a translator from the French, in particular of Robbe-Grillet. As of 2004 she lives in the south of France.