Anne Olivier Bell (1916–2018)

Anne Olivier Bell, née Popham, was born in London, a daughter of Arthur E. (Hugh) Popham, a British art historian and expert on Italian art, and his wife Brynhild Olivier, a cousin of Laurence Olivier. Anne's parents divorced in 1924, and she lived first with her mother, then after her mother's death in 1935, with her father. She attended St. Paul's Girls' School, then went to Germany to train as an opera singer. Having failed at this, she returned to London to briefly attend the Central School of Speech and then enrolled in art classes at the Courtauld Institute. During World War II, she worked for the Ministry of Information as a research assistant in the photographs division and then in the publications department. In 1945, she became one of the famous so-called Monuments Men, seeking to prevent the destruction of cultural artifacts in Europe and restore works of art stolen by the Nazis. She was the only woman and the only civilian in the group. Her diaries of this time are now in the Imperial War Museum archives. In 1947,Anne joined the newly-established Arts Council and was responsible for the publication of exhibition catalogues. In 1952, she married Qu entin Bell, with whom she had three children. The family moved to Cobbe Place in Beddingham, when Bell was made professor of Art History and Theory at the University of Sussex. Anne assisted her husband in his pioneering biography of his aunt Virginia Woolf, which was published to great acclaim in 1972. Anne then edited Virginia Woolf's diaries, publishing them in five volumes starting in 1977. She also published a memoir of her work, Editing Virginia Woolf's Diary. In 1984, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. After the death of Duncan Grant in 1978, Anne was instrumental in establishing a charitable trust to preserve Charleston farmhouse, the country seat of the Bloomsbury Group. She was also an expert on the art works preserved there, and served as an editor of Canvas, the publication of the Friends of Charleston. In 2007, Anne was honored by the U.S. government for her work with the Monuments Men; and in 2014, she was appointed MBE for her services to Literature and the Arts. See her portrait, "Miss Anne Popham," painted by Graham Bell (no relation) in 1938.