Christabel Bielenberg dies

Bielenberg's story became a popular TV drama

Christabel Bielenberg, the author who gave thousands of readers an insight into life in Nazi Germany, has died aged 94.

Bielenberg's book, The Past is Myself, which recounted her life in Germany during Hitler's rise to power and under Allied bombardment during the war, became a best seller in the 1980s.

Born Christabel Burton in 1909, she passed over a place at Oxford to study opera in Hamburg.

There she married Peter Bielenberg in 1934, who later became a civil servant in the Nazi regime.

He was part of the circle who tried to assassinate Hitler in the 1944 plot.

But though picked up by the Gestapo, he was not executed.

Instead he was sent to a concentration camp and then to the Russian front.

After the war they bought an estate in Ireland, where they settled.

"All our friends in Germany had been murdered by Hitler, so we left," she said.

"I couldn't expect my German husband to live in England, which was still very anti-German. So we came to Ireland".

The Past is Myself was turned into a British television drama starring Elizabeth Hurley.

Bielenberg wrote a sequel, The Road Ahead, describing her family's transition to life in Ireland.

She is survived by three sons.