Ann Thwaite in conversation with the Rt Revd Dr Stephen Platten

Ann Thwaite has published five major biographies, a family history and numerous children's books.
 Her life of A.A. Milne won the Whitbread Biography Prize 
in 1990 and led to the 2017 film Goodbye Christopher Robin. Her biography of Frances Hodgson 
Burnett has recently been published in a new edition entitled Beyond the Secret Garden as the film The Secret Garden,
 starring Colin Firth and Julie Walters, is due for release in August.
Ann's publisher is www.duckworthbooks.co.uk 

This session is presented in association with the Berwick upon Tweed U3A (click for further information) 


This event is generously sponsored by Shunters Limited (click for further information)

Reviews of Beyond the Secret Garden

‘Intelligent, moderate, thoughtful, well documented, well organised, and well written… a model of a literary biography.’ New York Review of Books

‘Ann Thwaite has admirably mapped out the complex and peripatetic story, attacking its problems with insight and diligence.’ Times Literary Supplement

‘A fascinating and valuable book.’ Sunday Times

Ann has written five major biographies. The first, of Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of The Secret Garden, was published in 1974. Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape won the 1985 Duff Cooper Prize and was described by John Carey as “one of the finest literary biographies of our time.” Emily Tennyson, The Poet’s Wife, is widely regarded as the most interesting biography of Tennyson himself. Glimpses of the Wonderful, a life of Edmund’s father, Philip Henry Gosse, was picked out by D.J. Taylor in the Independent as one of the ‘Ten Best Biographies’ ever. Following the publication of AA Milne: His Life in 1990, The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh, a scrapbook off-shoot of the biography, was published in 1992. In 1990 Christopher Milne had told the author: “In you my father has found the perfect biographer… I am left with nothing but admiration and happiness.” For forty years Ann also wrote children’s books.

 In 2017 she published a version of her 1990 biography of A.A Milne to coincide with the major film Goodbye Christopher Robin for which she was a consultant. It appeared with the subtitle A.A Milne and the Making of Winnie-the-Pooh and had an introduction by Frank Cottrell Boyce, the screenwriter.