 She was the daughter of Captain Frederick Woulfe-Brenan, the Labour candidate standing against Lady Astor in the Plymouth Sutton constituency in the general elections of 1922, 1923 and 1924, and of Saffie Beechey Kingsford, great granddaughter of the Georgian portrait painter Sir William Beechey.At the outbreak of war in 1939, John Röhl was taken by his parents first to Forst on the River Neisse in eastern Germany and then to Pécs in southern Hungary.His first languages were Hungarian and German.