Anne Baker (7)

Anne Baker was born on the banks of the Mersey in Birkenhead, England, and had two much older siblings. During World War II, she was evacuated alone to a small farm near Llanidloes in mid-Wales and stayed there for three years. She returned home after the bombing raids were over in order to go to Wirral Grammar School for Girls in Bebington. Her father died when she was 15. Although she had wanted to be a writer from childhood, she didn't think at that time that it would provide her with a living. She decided to train as a nurse at Birkenhead General Hospital. The year she qualified, she met her husband Ron, an army radiographer serving at that time in Libya. After the wedding, she returned with him to Tripoli and worked at an American First Aid post there. She later worked as a typist. When her husband got a new job in the British Colonial Service, they sailed out Lagos, Nigeria. She got a job as secretary to an English engineer and later was secretary and P.A. to the manager of a British insurance company. The couple lived in Lagos for 10 years and had two children. The family enjoyed life in Lagos, but returned to England when their daughter was approaching school age. Anne began writing books, while taking a course in midwifery and training at Liverpool University to become a Health Visitor. For 10 years, she visited people in their homes and tried to help with their many problems. "I saw life as it really was in Birkenhead," she says on her website. "As it turned out, I couldn’t have chosen anything better to train myself for writing Merseyside sagas." Her first novel, Like Father, Like Daughter, was published in 1991. She has since published a few dozen works. [NOTE: I have separated out her entry from that of historical biographer and charity volunteer Anne Salmond Baker, born 1914, author of Morning Star].