Janet Morgan was born in 1945 in Canada to English parents while her father, an atomic research expert, was working on a top-secret British project in Montreal.

Evidence of her Canadian origins was lost until 1999, when her birth certificate was found in archives in Quebec. When she was presented with the certificate, her husband Robert Bruce, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, quipped: ‘At last - she’s a real person.’ Had he doubted that, he need only have looked at her accomplishments in business - as an advisor to companies and governments on long-range strategic planning and technology - and her career as an author, which includes biographies of Agatha Christie, Edwina Mountbatten and, as editor, Richard Crossman’s diaries.