Ann Pasternak Slater (1962) rose to prominence as a literary scholar and translator. She has written and lectured extensively on the work of her uncle, Novel laureate Boris Pasternak, specifically his translations into Russian of Shakespeare. She also translated A Vanished Present, the memoirs of her uncle Alexander Pasternak (1893–1982), an architect, as well as Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Tolstoy’s short story, Master and Man.
Formerly a Fellow and Tutor of St Anne’s College, Oxford, Ann is a recognised Waugh expert and has published an acclaimed edition of his short stories.
Anna, with her husband, the poet and critic, Craig Raine, is mother to OHS alumna Nina Raine.
Of her days at OHS, Ann said that, ‘Idiosyncrasy was what we loved most in our teachers – Miss Gummer, the lapsed nun turned English teacher, ferociously critical, a brilliant director, the charismatic Miss Jean Brodie of the High School; Mrs Balhetchet, her pullovers worn back-to-front with insouciant Gallic elegance, her infectious intellectualism that got us reading everything, from Racine to Maupassant, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, till nothing was a set text and everything was interesting.’