Elisabeth Kożmian was born in Warsaw in 1944 during the Uprising. Her mother, Lily Tkaczyk was a beautiful young woman who came from a modest Warsaw family. Her father, Jan Kożmian (born 1896), was a wealthy gentry farmer and he fell in love with her. Her mother used to sing in cabaret and they met at one such event.
 

The Kożmian family came from the countryside of Lubelskie, near Lublin whose landscape and agriculture is similar to Norfolk but it is remote from the sea. Jan inherited a 1,500-hectare (3,700 acres) estate when he was six from a maternal uncle, although he was the youngest of five siblings.  Elisabeth knew only her maternal grandmother who used to read her grown-up stories when she was a tiny child.
 

Before WWI, Jan studied Agriculture at Vienna University but hostilities interrupted that activity. In 1920 he wanted to enlist for the fight against the Bolsheviks but he had poor eyesight so he became a translator for the French Mission which was helping the Polish Army. He managed his huge estate very well but was also able to travel widely abroad, writing about his adventures which included a safari in Africa in 1933.
 

He did not join the military in WWII as he had to keep farming but he was obliged to accommodate German officers on the estate. While he was doing that, he assisted Polish independence fighters living in the forests risking his life in the process. Many of the German officers he accommodated had anti-Hitler sentiments and they didn’t want to go to Russia to fight there.
 

After the War, Elisabeth was raised in a tiny flat in Warsaw, then almost completely destroyed by the Germans. The family had planned to return to their property near Lublin but the Communist authorities sized their land without any form of compensation. Her parents were friendly with some American diplomats who wanted to take the family back with them to the U.S.A. in 1949 but her father was determined to stay in his homeland.
 

Elisabeth went to one of the best state high schools in Warsaw and her favourite subjects were History, Geography, Polish and French languages and Art. She went to Warsaw University and spent two periods in France, which she loved. In 1964 she was invited to go to London by her uncle Andrze to improve her English. She had decided to stay abroad for two or three years but didn’t tell her parents or friends.
 

Unfortunately her uncle died of cancer just before she set off to the UK but she still went and stayed with distant relatives. She enrolled for English lessons but was frustrated because she couldn’t understand British television or English speakers. However, with practise she began to improve and found a job as an au pair and then earned a qualification teaching English as a foreign language and she also graduated with a BA Honours degree in French and Art History at London University Birkbeck College in 1971.