She accompanied her husband to the Suez Canal when he was posted there as a diplomat. During the Israeli invasion of the canal in 1956, they were forced to flee. Denys Brown was later posted to Yugoslavia, Sweden and West Germany. Patricia Bartley found that the diplomatic wife's role was a full-time one, disconnecting her from her own intellectual pursuits. However, she did contribute two chapters in a history of the GCHQ describing her section, as well as write newspaper reviews of codebreaking-related books.