[close] Although born in Kent and largely brought up in London, Anna is a bit of a wild Celt being of Irish, Scottish and Welsh extraction. During her childhood, she spent many unconventional yet magical school holidays travelling around Eastern Europe and some off the map destinations in a battered old car and on a shoe string with her mother, older sister, Cecilia, and her inspiring maiden teacher aunts, Minny and Della. It is these experiences that have led to her life long love of travel and adventure. After leaving school, Anna studied English Literature and Classics at Leeds University before joining the national charity, Help the Aged, as a graduate trainee. Promoted to senior press officer, she organised many major fundraising and gala events involving high profile celebrities and the late Princess Diana, who at that time was the charity’s patron.

Moving to the Guinness Book of World Records she became International PR spokesman and invigilator, working closely with both the late Norris McWhirter, CBE, and TV presenter, Roy Castle, and travelled the world judging extraordinary records. Those she most enjoyed invigilating included the world’s longest conga line with singer Gloria Estefan in Miami, the tallest tower of bread in Indonesia, the festival of record breaking in Korea, the longest train journey which culminated in Hong Kong, and driving around Finland in the world’s longest limo. Anna was often searched at Heathrow customs when she returned to the UK with weird and wonderful artifacts from record-breaking countries and was once nearly arrested for carrying an enormous ginseng root floating in a water tank-a gift for Norris McWhirter. More stressful moments in the job included meeting Mr Mangetout, the world’s greatest omnivore, the world’s largest and fiercest dog (who bit the bottom of a BBC concierge while Anna performed on Blue Peter!) and dancing with the world’s fastest cucumber slicer on live TV.

After several years of unadulterated fun and madness at Guinness, Anna became marketing director and then a board director for a luxury bathrooms and aromatics company in Mayfair. Some years later she established her own PR and Marketing consultancy with clients in luxury travel, retail, hotels and spas.

After an impromptu meeting with renowned British explorer, Colonel John Blashford-Snell, OBE, Anna accompanied him on an expedition to Nepal, and today remains a trustee and director of his charity, The Scientific Exploration Society (SES). She is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and continues to take part in tough scientific expeditions to remote corners of the world. The most bizarre of these, documented by BBC television, was when she and the Colonel led an expedition to the remote Wai Wai tribe in Guyana in order to bring them a grand piano for their mud hut church. Anna will be off on another SES expedition to measure the ears and footprints of pygmy elephants in Borneo in September 2008.

She is a keen runner, having completed an international marathon annually for the last five years on behalf of her favourite causes, SES, and a small orphanage in Sri Lanka which she has befriended. She is taking part in her sixth international marathon in Athens in November 2008. Anna has been a freelance journalist for many years, having written features for the Financial Times, Independent, Evening Standard, Daily Express and Tatler among others, as well as several in-flight magazines. For the last five years she has contributed a weekly column to the Majorca Daily Bulletin. Anna lives between London and Mallorca, with her husband Alan and son, Oliver. Anna recently presented her first book, A Lizard in my Luggage , Mayfair to Mallorca in one easy move (published March 2007) to an audience at The Times Literary Festival in Oxford. The sequel, Cat on a Hot Tiled Roof, Mayhem in Mayfair and Mallorca, will be published in August 2008.
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