Coral Lansbury attended North Sydney Girls High School and entered the University of Sydney where she earned a Bachelor of Arts. Lansbury later gained a PhD in English and History from Auckland University, New Zealand. She lived at times in the USA and worked in universities there.
Lansbury wrote scholarly books on Elizabeth Gaskell and Anthony Trollope, and on Edwardian England (1985). She also wrote television and radio plays for both the ABC and BBC, and several unpublished plays are held as manuscripts at the Fryer Library, University of Queensland.
Lansbury is the mother of Australian politician Malcolm Turnbull, who became Prime Minister in 2015, and a distant cousin of the actor Angela Lansbury.
