Claire Auden was raised in England by two English parents who were from the Irish Catholic Church. She is described as being very much like their older half-sister, which may explain her unusual dress sense and her somewhat mysterious mannerisms – both of which are often attributed to being of Irish decent. Claire grew up in Widensborough, a very prosperous town on the south coast of the UK where people were known to be quite conservative by National Association of Merchandisers standards. Claire’s two older sisters, Leila and Ruth, also had careers in the publishing business and were both involved in theatre.
Claire became a successful writer in her twenties, writing under the name Anna Lee. This was during the era of the short lived “Gossip genre” that was popular at the time. Her first novel was published under the name Cleopatra. In these novels she is often described as having a large, though not very noticeable nose and mouth, but this was deliberately done in order to distinguish her from the other female writers of the period. Despite this, there is no clear indication whether this was intentional or not.
In her final years, she began to work as a writer for the British newspaper, the Daily Express. One of her most well-known stories was one that reported the death of Princess Diana. Though she never identified the source of the information, it can be assumed that her career spanned a period during the height of the Diana clan’s power and it would have continued into the late sixties and seventies at the very least. It is also possible that she stayed in the profession because of her long-time friends who were also in the broadcasting industry.