Anne Sebba

Life

Anne Sebba (née Rubinstein) was born in London on 31 December 1951. She read history at King's College London (1969–72) and, after a brief spell at the BBC World Service in Bush House, joined Reuters as a graduate trainee, working in London and Rome, from 1972 to 1978. She wrote her first book while living in New York City and now lives in London.

Her discovery of an unpublished series of letters from Wallis Simpson to her second husband Ernest Simpson, shortly before her eventual marriage to the former King, Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, formed the basis of a Channel 4 documentary, The Secret Letters, first shown on UK television in August 2011, and also a biography of Simpson, That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson Duchess of Windsor.

Sebba's books have been translated into several languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Czech and Chinese.

Since working as a correspondent for Reuters, Sebba has written for The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, Times Higher Education Supplement and The Independent. She has been cited as an authority on biography.

In 2009, Sebba wrote and presented The Daffodil Maiden on BBC Radio 3. It was an account of the pianist Harriet Cohen, who inspired the composer Arnold Bax when she wore a dress adorned with a single daffodil and became his mistress for the next 40 years. In 2010, she wrote and presented the documentary Who was Joyce Hatto? for BBC Radio 4.

In September 2009, Sebba joined the management committee of the Society of Authors. She was chair of the committee between 2012 and 2014 and is now a member of the Council of the Society of Authors. She is a longstanding member of English PEN and after several years on the Writers in Prison Committee served twice on the PEN management committee. She visited Turkey twice as an official observer for PEN for the trial of journalist Asiye Guzel Zeybeck. She has served on the judging panel of the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize. and has twice been a judge for the Biographers' Club awards. In 2012, Sebba spoke at the Beijing and Shanghai Literary Festivals and the Sydney Writers' Festival.

Sebba is a Trustee of the National Archives Trust (NAT), a senior research fellow of the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

In 2023–2024, Sebba was appointed a judge for the Inaugural Women's Prize for Non- Fiction.

Critical reception

Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother was reviewed, inter alia, in The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, and The Scotsman,

According to The Daily Telegraph, Sebba's book retrieved 'Jennie Churchill in sparkling three dimensions [and] does much to put flesh on the bones of a subject who has been reduced to a cipher for American Brashness.'

The Literary Review said the book was 'sharp and intelligent… immensely enjoyable. [Sebba's prose] is as smooth and elegant as expensive cashmere; it reads like a novel.'

That Woman was described in The New York Times Sunday Book Review as a "devourable feast of highly spiced history…which acquires the propulsive energy of a thriller as it advances through Wallis's life". and in The Washington Times as "a delicious new biography… meticulously researched".

In 2016, Sebba published Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s (Weidenfeld & Nicolson UK), published in the United States as Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died under the Nazi Occupation (St Martin's Press). This was described as "fascinating and beautifully written" by The Spectator and was the joint winner of the Franco-British society's book prize for 2016.

Les Parisiennes has been translated into Chinese, (SDX) Czech (Bourdon) and French (La Librarie Vuibert). In 2018, a reviewer in Le Figaro Magazine coined the phrase "La Méthode Sebba" to describe the author's method of linking interviews with living people and archive material to create a tableau of women during the dark years.

Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) in 2021, concerns the Rosenberg espionage case. Sebba's book received wide-ranging positive reviews and was shortlisted for the Wingate Award of 2022. Adam Sisman of the Literary Review said "In Anne Sebba, Ethel Rosenberg has found the ideal biographer, sympathetic without being blind to her faults and with a sure understanding of the period … Her portrayal is compelling". In the San Francisco Chronicle Carl Rollyson described the book as a "compassionate account of Ethel's character as a wife and mother" and an "engrossing narrative". In The Critic Gerald Jacobs described Sebba's reconstruction of the trial as "gripping" and went on to say "Anne Sebba has given Ethel Rosenberg a towering memorial". In The Telegraph Jake Kerridge said "Sebba gets her readers under the skin of both Ethel and her era so effectively that this shameful saga had me alternately close to tears and boiling with rage. She is right to identify this as a uniquely despicable episode in US history." Rachel Cooke in the Observer called Ethel Rosenberg as "a powerful biography" and "gripping". In The Guardian Melissa Benn said "Sebba has dug deep beneath this famous and archetypically male story of spying, weapons and international tensions to give us an intelligent, sensitive and absorbing account of the short, tragic life of a woman made remarkable by circumstance".

In 2025, to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camps, Sebba published The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz  A story of Survival in the UK and US.

Simon Heffer in The Telegraph wrote :  Sebba's command of detail is superb. She quite rightly outlines the atrocities of the sadists, psychopaths and savages whom Auschwitz seemed to attract like a magnet; but also the resilience and courage of a group of women who refused to be beaten by evil, and used music to save their lives.

In the Spectator Clare Mulley described the book as  "Deeply moving . . . This complex story pays fine tribute not only to the women's orchestra but also to their captive audiences, who remained as affected by the music as by the inhumanity that surrounded them'"

Olivia Lichtenstein in the MAIL ON SUNDAY wrote 'Deeply affecting . . . What makes The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz so powerful is its unswerving commitment to detail. Sebba ensures that every woman's name, every story, is documented. This is not a faceless tragedy, it is a collection of individual lives, each deserving of remembrance

The book was described by Kathryn Hughes  in The Guardian as Remarkable . . . deft . . . A vivid account of the experiences of the 40 or so women who briefly came together to make the music that saved their lives. Running through this fine book is Sebba's empathy for the impossible moral choices presented to these young women

Caroline Moorehead wrote in the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Meticulous research . . . a detailed picture of the orchestra's players. [A] remarkable story . . . The author has done these women proud .

Bibliography

• Samplers: Five Centuries of a Gentle Craft (1979)
• Mother Teresa (1982) (Blackbird Books series)
• Margot Fonteyn (1983) (Blackbird Books series)
• Enid Bagnold: A Life (1986)
• Laura Ashley: A Life By Design (1990)
• Battling For News: The Rise of the Woman Reporter (1994)
• Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image (1997)
• The Exiled Collector: William Bankes and the Making of an English Country House (2005)
• Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother (2007)
• That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (2011)
• Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s (2016)
• "A Room of One's Own... or Not?" in The Women Writers Handbook (2020)
• Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy (2021)
• The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival (2025)

References

References

1. (June 30, 2010). "More about Anne Sebba".
2. (23 August 2011). "Channel 4 Reveals Wallis Simpson's Secret Letters". [[Channel Four Television Corporation]].
3. Sebba, Anne. (11 September 1998). "A Life Best Remembered". Times Higher Education.
4. Sebba, Anne. (1 June 1996). "The story they didn't want to tell". The Independent.
5. Sherriff, Lucy. (12 December 2006). "Memory conference considers the future of our pasts". [[The Register]].
6. "The Daffodil Maiden". BBC.
7. Page, Benedicte. (14 September 2009). "Holland to chair Society of Authors". [[The Bookseller]].
8. ''Times'' articles: Beyond Bars: 50 Years of the Pen Writers in Prison Committee by Jo Glanville
9. Bunder, Leslie. (5 December 2006). "British Muslim Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Chairs Jewish Book Awards".
10. "2012 Sydney Writers' Festival speakers".
11. "The National Archives Trust - Our board".
12. "Senior Fellowships".
13. "Anne Sebba".
14. (1 October 2007). "The Monday Book". The Independent.
15. Eade, Philip. (3 January 2008). "Winston Churchill's American mother". The Daily Telegraph.
16. Shoard, Catharine. (25 October 2008). "Paperbacks". The Scotsman.
17. McElwaine, Sandra. (10 March 2012). "Marrying Up". The New York Times.
18. Schillinger, Liesl. (9 March 2012). "THAT WOMAN: THE LIFE OF WALLIS SIMPSON, DUCHESS OF WINDSOR". The Washington Times.
19. (2 July 2016). "Keeping up appearances in 1940s Paris".
20. "About - FRANCO-BRITISH SOCIETY".
21. (25 May 2018). "Le Figaro Magazine".
22. "Adam Sisman - The Spies Who Loved Each Other".
23. Rollyson, Carl. (June 8, 2021). "Review: Ethel Rosenberg biography shows how her execution defined the Cold War, horrified the world". San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guide.
24. Jacobs, Gerald. (June 2021). "Scapegoat of a Paranoid Era". The Critic (Issue 18).
25. Kerridge, Jake. (2021-06-18). "Soviet spy – or human sacrifice? Ethel Rosenberg revisited". The Telegraph.
26. (2021-06-27). "Ethel Rosenberg by Anne Sebba review – a mother murdered by cold war hysteria".
27. Benn, Melissa. (24 June 2021). "Review: Ethel Rosenberg by Anne Sebba review – a notorious cold war tragedy".
28. Heffer, Simon. (2025-03-12). "The extraordinary story behind the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz". The Telegraph.
29. (2025-03-19). "The agony of making music at Auschwitz".
30. Sebba, Anne. (2025-03-08). "How I reunited two members of the women-only Auschwitz orchestra".
31. "An orchestra in hell".
32. Hamilton, Robert. (30 November 1980). "Books". Los Angeles Times.
33. Sebba, Anne. (1982). "Mother Teresa". MacRae Books.
34. Sebba, Anne. (1983). "Margot Fonteyn". MacRae.
35. Weissman, Vicki. (6 December 2009). "The Infuriating Bohemian". New York Times.
36. (22 September 1999). "The Laura Ashley Story". BBC News.
37. Joffee, Linda. (14 February 1994). "Book Review". The Independent.
38. Stanford, Peter. (15 August 2004). "The Exiled Collector by Anne Sebba".
39. Lewis, Roger. (2 September 2011). "That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor by Anne Sebba". Daily Telegraph.
40. [https://www.aurorametro.com/product/women-writers-handbook/ Aurora Metro Books]. Retrieved 4 June 2025