Anna Nicholas is a wild Celt being of Irish, Scottish and Welsh extraction. She had an eccentric childhood in Kent and London, spending her summer holidays rattling around in the back of an old car, visiting off the map destinations around the world with Barney, her teacher mother and two extraordinary maiden aunts, Minny and Della.After studying English and Classics at Leeds University, Anna became senior press officer for Help the Aged, often handling fundraising events involving the charity's patron, Princess Diana. She then joined the Guinness Book of Records working with Norris McWhirter, the book's founder, judging crazy records around the world, before joining a luxury aromatics and bathroom company in Jermyn Street. Some years later she successfully ran her own Mayfair travel and luxury lifestyle PR agency in Mayfair.She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society having participated in several tough global scientific expeditions with veteran explorer, Colonel John Blashford-Snell, OBE. Together they organised an expedition to carry a grand piano to the Wai Wai, a remote Amerindian tribe in Guyana, that was the subject of a BBC documentary.Anna runs an international marathon annually of behalf of orphanages in Sri Lanka which she visits whenever she can. Her website is at www.anna-nicholas.com She can be tweeted at @MajorcanPearls and has a regular blog at Telegraph Expat at www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/