Norah Sheppard was born in 1901. Her father was an NCO in the Dorset Regiment and served for many years in India. She was born in Kinsale [Ireland], where her father was then stationed, but grew up in Somerset (Ashill, near Ilminster) and Exeter [Devon]. Her working life was spent in the Civil Service, for many years as an expert short hand reporter, in which capacity she served on the British staffs of the international conferences. She also worked on the secret 18B Tribunal hearings of appeals by interned suspected fifth columnists, the two Palestine Commissions of the 1930s and the Ceylon Commission of 1944. She was awarded the MBE in 1946. By then she was working in the Treasury, retiring in 1961 to Bath. She died in 1993.