27: Anna Pasternak

Bunny is in the seaside garden of Anna Pasternak. Anna is well known as a journalist and author.

Anna had the privilege of growing up in a Gertrude Jekyll garden as a child, and loves gardens with different spaces or rooms within them.

One of Anna’s favourite plants is lilac, as they were her great uncle, Boris Pasternak’s favourite. Boris Pasternak won a Noble Prize for his book ‘Dr Zhivago’. Anna wrote a book ‘Lara: The Untold Love Story that Inspired Doctor Zhivago”, the book revealed for the first time the critical role played by Olga Ivinskaya (Boris’s mistress) in his life, and argues that without Olga it is likely that Doctor Zhivago would never have been completed or published.

Anna has also authored “Princess in Love” (about Diana and James Hewitt) and ‘Untitled:The Real Wallis Simpson’. Her mission is to write books that rehabilitate women whom history has treated unfairly.

For her present, Bunny took Anna a little known plant, Aloysia polystachya, which can be used to make a delicious herbal tea that has been proven to help relieve anxiety.