Anne Sebba was born in 1951 in London. She is a biographer and a journalist. Her discovery of letters between Wallis Simpson and Ernest Simpson formed the basis of the Channel 4 documentary The Secret Letters.
What’s your earliest memory?
Sitting on a camp bed, mesmerised by a teacher reading John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. It must have been a children’s version but, terrified and enthralled by the image of a Christian making his way through the Slough of Despond, I have never forgotten the power of storytelling.
Who are your heroes?
As a child, Ernest Shackleton, the explorer we learned about in school who did not always follow rules. In adulthood, Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who risked his life to save thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary.
What single thing would make your life better?
A dog.
What book last changed your thinking?
Richard Flanagan’s Question 7,which is about far too much to summarise here but shows how tiny threads can lead to cataclysmic events.
What would be your Mastermind specialist subject?
I used to say 1936, the year of the abdication, when the world had a chance to stop Hitler marching into the Rhineland and blew it. But this week it is the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz.
In which time and place, other than your own, would you like to live?
For anyone born in the shadow of the Second World War, as I was, it’s hard to think of another time when peace reigned, and progress seemed unstoppable, all now in tatters.
When were you happiest?
Obviously, when my three children arrived. But before that, when I was 21 in 1972, living in Rome as a trainee foreign correspondent for Reuters. I couldn’t believe I had landed this thrilling job and was being paid for having such fun; meeting Roman Polanski one day, Elizabeth Taylor the next. But mostly what made my time in Rome so memorable was learning from war-weary correspondents about the job I had always dreamed of, yet realising that for now nothing (much) was expected of me! And the sun shone almost every day.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Don’t regret what you have done, only what you haven’t. I’ve had a fair shot at following it but wish I had done more, met more people, visited more places.
What’s your theme tune?
Not sure I have one… but I took a small pile of records with me to Rome. “Killing Me Softly with His Song” sung by Roberta Flack had just been released and I played it constantly during my Italian year.
What’s currently bugging you?
Several world leaders.
In another life, what job might you have chosen?
A psychotherapist, or possibly a lawyer, who is also an author. I have to write to make sense of my thoughts. The habit is just too deeply ingrained.
Are we all doomed?
Probably. But I have just spent the last four years thinking about why people in the direst circumstances such as prisoners in Auschwitz, or Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge, or Jews in 15th-century Spain faced with the Inquisition of 1492, and many others facing world calamities, wanted to survive. All must have thought they were doomed, yet some spark of humanity is often enough to ignite the overriding will to live.
Anne Sebba’s “The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz” is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
[See also: What diplomats really think of our leaders]
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This article appears in the 26 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Putin’s Endgame