Carol Ann Lee

Carol Ann Lee (born 1969) is an English author and biographer who has written extensively on Anne Frank, the Holocaust and on the crimes of Moors Murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady.

Early life and career Carol Ann Lee was born in Wakefield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. She studied History of Art and Design at the University of Manchester and then followed her early interest, interviewing Holocaust survivors and working at the Manchester Jewish Museum.

Her tenth book, Evil Relations (2012), was nominated for the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger Award for Non-Fiction. Written in conjunction with David Smith, chief prosecution witness in the Moors Murders case, the book details, for the first time, Smith's story in full.

In 2012, Lee published A Fine Day for a Hanging: The Ruth Ellis Story, a re-examination of Ellis's life story and the facts surrounding her trial and subsequent execution for the murder of David Blakely.

Lee is published by Mainstream Publishing, an imprint of Random House.

Works Non-fictional 2000, Roses from the Earth: The Biography of Anne Frank (Penguin Books). 2001, Anne Frank's Story (Puffin Books). 2003, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank (Penguin Books). 2006, Anne Frank and the Children of the Holocaust (Viking Press). 2010, One of Your Own: The Life and Death of Myra Hindley (Edinburgh: Mainstream). 2011, with David Smith. Witness: The Story of David Smith, Chief Prosecution Witness in the Moors Murders Case (Edinburgh: Mainstream); published in 2012 as Evil Relations: The Man Who Bore Witness Against the Moors Murderers (Edinburgh: Mainstream). 2012, A Fine Day for a Hanging: The Ruth Ellis Story (Edinburgh: Mainstream). 2015, The Murders at White House Farm (London: Sidgwick & Jackson). 2020, with Peter Howse. The Pottery Cottage Murders (Robinson) 2024, Something Wicked: The Lives, Crimes and Deaths of the Pendle Witches (London: John Blake) Fictional 2007, The Winter of the World (Harper Perennial).

Television adaptations The Murders at White House Farm was adapted into the successful ITV drama White House Farm in 2020.

A Fine Day for a Hanging: The Ruth Ellis Story was adapted into the ITV drama A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, with Ellis being portrayed by Lucy Boynton.