about anna pasternak
Anna Pasternak is a writer and member of the famous Pasternak family: her great-grandfather was Leonid, the impressionist painter, her great-uncle was Boris the Nobel prize winning novelist, her grandmother was Josephine the philosopher and her father is revered Oxford biochemist Professor Charles Pasternak.
Anna was educated at St Paul’s Girls’ School and Christ Church, Oxford. This was followed by a year working for a publishing company, Quartet Books, from where she graduated into writing for the diary pages of newspapers; for The Telegraph, The Times and the Evening Standard.
Aged 26, she wrote the controversial global best-seller, Princess in Love, about Princess Diana’s love affair with James Hewitt. The aftermath of this obliterated her ambition to be a writer, as opposed to being a journalist. As no one wanted to believe that the fairy tale marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was a myth, the book was dismissed. Eighteen months later, when Diana admitted to the affair herself on Panorama, Anna was rehabilitated in the press, but was personally devastated. It took her fifteen years of research and writing features for every national newspaper to build the courage to write the book that she always felt was her destiny project; Lara; The Untold Love Story That Inspired Doctor Zhivago.
It was Anna’s assertion that if it wasn’t for Boris’s relationship with Olga, Doctor Zhivago would never have been completed or published. To her relief, Lara, garnered critical acclaim – The New Yorker described it as “a riveting, tragic tale”, while the Financial Times declared it “an irresistible account of joy, suffering and passion.” It was after the publication, that she decided that she wanted to spend the rest of her life writing books that rehabilitated women whom history has treated unfairly.
Anna adored researching and writing her latest book, The American Duchess, The Real Wallis Simpson. She had no idea the extent to which she would come to admire Wallis Simpson and delight in championing her. The Times described The American Duchess as “unputdownable”. Her aim as a writer it is to write with heart and touch the reader in the process.
Discover Anna’s top five books
to touch your heart
