Here's a long shot -
Joyce Marion Wallace was born on January 3 1923 in Shanghai...back in Shanghai in 1940, aged only 17, she married Sean Rainey, an Irishman then serving as a private in the Seaforth Highlanders. This was partly a strategic move to get out of China: the Raineys duly moved to Australia, where Marion had powerful cousins in the Fairfax family, owners of the Sydney Morning Herald, and then to Bangalore. Here two children were born, and young Mrs Rainey served briefly as recruiting officer for the Black Watch while learning about "the sins of gin" and how to mix dry martinis.
Such skills made her welcome when she arrived as a young divorced woman in austere post-war London - she went on to marry and divorce Richard Wrottesley 5th Bart and have a son, Mark, by him.
It's Sean Rainey I'm after, who ended up as a Major, who is proving v elusive.
