Our host Vick Hope is joined by historian and award-winning biographer Anne Sebba.
Anne Sebba began her career as a Reuters correspondent based in London and Rome. She has written eleven works of non-fiction, mostly about iconic 20th century women, translated into a variety of languages. She is the author of the international bestseller That Woman, an acclaimed biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, and the prize-winning Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died Under Nazi Occupation. Anne was also a judge for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction in 2024.
Her newest release The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival tells an astonishing story of female solidarity, the power of music, and survival against all odds.
Listen to the full episode here and read on to discover Anne’s five most influential books by women.
I grew up in a fairly traditional conservative family. My parents didn’t want me to go to university, so that was the first battle. And then from university, I went to Reuters and lived on my own in Rome. So I felt I was, in my own small way, breaking a few boundaries. That’s why this is my bible. It’s about a woman who develops and matures.
I just loved it! The idea that Nora is desperate to understand who her father was, but she is even more desperate to understand her mother. And in describing her mother’s life, she uses such lush prose – talking about dresses and parties and drinks and this grand life that her mother led. Only Anne Enright could do that. A biography couldn’t possibly carry that descriptive power but it’s more than a biography – you feel you are there.
I love Elizabeth Gaskell because here’s a woman writing about women’s experiences! It’s a wonderful story about the Napoleonic wars and the power of the press gangs and of course Elizabeth Gaskell researched deeply at the British Museum. It’s a book of social realism, it’s a book about history but with a heroine at its core.
I, of course, adore Willa Knox because she’s a freelance journalist and everything is a story and she goes everywhere with her notebook and pencil. […] Her life is very rich and very challenging and throughout it all she is trying to be a journalist. It’s such a convincing story of how complicated life for women really is but she doesn’t complain and just gets on with it. For me, this is just one of Barbara Kingsolver’s best of all-time books because it’s so genuine and heartfelt.
It is unblinking in its criticism of the French upper classes. […] This is a novel, they were invented characters, but they were characters that Irene understood only too well. […] But it wasn’t finished – this book is full of notes that she intended to go back and revise. Of course her death is a tragedy at any level, but it’s a tragedy because of the books that might’ve been. This would’ve been a French “War and Peace”, I’m absolutely convinced of it.
