Barbara Harriet Taqui Altounyan, known as Taqui, was born in London on 16 May 1917 and died in Dorking, Surrey on 14 July 2001. In 1944 she married Robert Stephens (died 1992). They had three sons and one daughter. She wrote two memoirs of Syria, In Aleppo Once (1969) and Chimes from a Wooden Bell (c1990).