Yvonne Jean Hickman Hitchens (née Hickman) was born on July 16, 1921, in England to a working-class family of Jewish descent. She served in the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) during World War II, where she met her future husband, Eric Hitchens, a career officer in the Royal Navy. The couple married after the war and had two sons: Peter, born in 1949, and Christopher, born in 1949. Yvonne was described by her son Christopher as warm and intellectually curious, contrasting with her husband's more austere demeanor. She worked as a homemaker and briefly as a school bursar while supporting her family's modest lifestyle, often encouraging her children's education and cultural interests despite financial constraints. Her marriage to Eric was reportedly passionless and strained, marked by Eric's naval career demands and post-retirement role as a bookkeeper at a boarding school. In the early 1970s, amid personal dissatisfaction, she began an affair with Timothy Bryan, a former Anglican priest. In 1973, the two traveled to Athens, Greece, where they entered a suicide pact. Yvonne died by suicide on November 28, 1973, at the age of 52, an event that profoundly impacted her family, particularly her son Christopher, who later reflected on it in his memoir Hitch-22. She was buried in Athens New Protestant Cemetery.