Shirley was born as Vera Buchthal to a Jewish father, a judge in Dortmund who lost his post to the Nazi regime,[2] and a non-Jewish Viennese mother. In July 1939, at the age of five, Shirley arrived, together with her nine-year-old sister Renate, to Britain as a Kindertransport child refugee.[2][3] She was placed in the care of foster parents living in the Midlands town of Sutton Coldfield.[1] She was later re-united with her biological parents, but said she "never really bonded with them".[4]