Shiela Grant Duff (1913-2004) was the daughter of Adrian Grant Duff and Ursula, née Lubbock. She was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where her contemporaries included Isaiah Berlin, Douglas Jay, Goronwy Rees and the German Rhodes Scholar Adam von Trott.

After university Shiela travelled in Germany and learnt journalism under Edgar Ansel Mowrer, the Paris-based correspondent of the Chicago Daily News. She covered the plebiscite in the Saarland in early 1935 for The Observer before returning to London to work briefly for the Labour Party, Krishna Menon and Jarwarhalal Nehru. In 1936 she moved to Prague from where she reported for The Observer and other newspapers for two years, becoming deeply involved in the Czechoslovak cause. She put the Czech journalist Hubert Ripka in touch with Winston Churchill in an attempt to reverse the appeasement policy of the Chamberlain government. Her book about the Nazi threat to Czechoslovakia, Europe and the Czechs, was published In September 1938 as the Munich Agreement was signed and Shiela returned to London.

Shiela became editor of the Czech section of the BBC European Service and in 1942 married Noel Newsome, Director of the BBC European Service. Her book, A German Protectorate: The Czechs under Nazi Rule, appeared in 1942 and in the 1980s she published her memoirs, The Parting of Ways, and her correspondence with von Trott, A Noble Conflict. Following divorce in 1952 Shiela married Micheal Sokolov Grant, a White Russian who had been an officer in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. They farmed in England and Ireland until Micheal's death in 1998. Shiela was survived by two daughters and three sons.

Shiela's paternal grandfather, Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff (1829-1906) was a Liberal MP and Governor of Madras. Her maternal grandfather, Sir John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, (1834-1913) was a banker, politician and polymath. For further details on both see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.