That Woman (Sebba) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1951
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—King's College, London
• Currently—lives in London, England


Anne Sebba is a British biographer, writer, lecturer and journalist. She is the author of eight non-fiction books for adults, two biographies for children and several introductions to reprinted classics.

Anne Sebba (nee Rubinstein) was born in London in 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 1972-8. She wrote her first book while living in New York 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Her discovery of an unpublished series of letters from Wallis Simpson to her second husband Ernest Simpson, shortly before her eventual marriage to the ex- King, Edward Vlll, later Duke of Windsor, formed the basis of a Channel 4 film, 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. The letters have led to a reappraisal of The Abdication Crisis. Sebba’s books have been translated into several languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian and Polish.

Since working as a correspondent for Reuters, Sebba has written for the (London) Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Spectator, Times Higher Educational Supplement and the Independent.

In 2009 Sebba wrote and presented The Daffodil Maiden on BBC Radio 3, the story of the pianist Harriet Cohen. Cohen inspired the composer Arnold Bax when she wore a dress adorned with a single daffodil and became his mistress for the next 40 years. Gillian Reynolds, in the Daily Telegraph described it as a “frank and moving account...beautifully produced.” 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 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 went to 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. (From Wikipedia.)