Anna Buxton

ABOUT ME:

I was born and grew up in the town of Burgas, Bulgaria the only child of an accountant and a teacher.

BACKGROUND:

On my father's side, I come from Bulgarian stock - my great/great grandfather was Vulchan Voyvoda - a famous brigand, about whose exploits against the Turks many legends have been told and many folk songs sung. Treasure seekers are to this day, seeking his fabled buried hoard in his favourite haunts. In my youth, I learned from my father and his relatives a great deal about the migration of the family from southern Thrace to a village near Pomorie, called Bata.

My maternal grandmother was Greek - her parents had moved from northern Greece - the area of Thessalonica and settled initially in Pomorie, where Greeks have lived since the 4th century B.C, but after the fire in Pomorie, they moved to Bulgarovo. When my grandfather - a young man from Pirne, went to ask

my great - grand parents for the hand of their youngest daughter, they refused to accept him, because he was too poor. She waited for him for 7 years, until he accumulated some wealth in lands and property, she married him and they settled in Aytos, where their children were born. They had a daughter and a son. When she reached the right age, my mother was sent to be educated in the American College in Symeonovo, near Sofia.

Unfortunately, when communism came in 1944 all the family property was confiscated, only to be returned to my grandparents' descendants after 40+ years in a total state of disrepair and neglect.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION:

My family was quite poor in the 50s, as the communist authorities did not allow my mother to teach. This was to prevent her from influencing the socialist workers and their children with her bourgeois thinking.

We lived only on my father's salary - at the time, he was the accountant of the Burgas Port. We never owned a car and all the little money we had, was spent on my education. I lived with my parents until I married, which was the tradition in Bulgaria at the time.

When I was young, my mother spoke English to me. After graduating secondary school in Burgas, she persuaded me to stay at home and join the newly opened Tourist College in Burgas. There, apart from English, I studied Polish, German and continued with the Russian, which I had studied in school. After a year, I decided that tourism was not my thing and was accepted to do a degree in English and Bulgarian Philology along with a P.G.C.E. in Veliko Tirnovo University.

Veliko Tirnovo - the capital of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom, was a very suitable place for me to study - I was already showing interest in history, folklore, linguistics, literature and languages.

WORK:

On graduating, I taught for 4/5 years in the English Language School in Burgas (an elite school, where only the brightest children were accepted through a rather difficult entrance exam; exceptions made, of course, for children of "active fighters against fascism"). I decided to leave secondary education when I was refused promotion. Then I taught for a year in the Chemical University in Burgas, after which I went to work in a company called Bulgarcontrola, whose experts surveyed import and export goods in the port of Burgas.

TRAVEL:

By then, I had travelled to most of the countries of Eastern Europe, except the USSR and applied to the Police for permission to visit England, with an invitation from two English girl friends. To my great amazement, I was allowed to travel and in the summer of 1977 had a wonderful time visiting Italy, Switzerland, France and England for the first time.

MARRIAGE AND LIFE IN ENGLAND:

I came back home to Burgas in September 1977 and met my husband Chris shortly after this. By the end of 1978, after waiting for a long time for permission from the relevant authorities, we were married in Pomorie. Our daughter - Malinna Joanna was born in Burgas. In 1980, we moved to the UK and bought a house in Colchester, Essex. Chris taught and I worked for a seven years in the local theatre, until I discovered that the Department of Education and Science could recognise my Bulgarian teaching qualifications. Having sent my application to them, I signed on to do a Business Post-Graduate course. After my teacher status for the UK was approved, the Post Graduate Qualification allowed me to start teaching Business in Essex Secondary Schools and Sixth Form Colleges. Our son Ivan David Vladislav was born in Colchester and we continued to take trips to Bulgaria, sometimes several times per year.

After some time, when I became Head of Faculty, I took a Master of Arts in Education degree and trained many teachers in East Anglia in topical educational issues. After 20 years of teaching, my career ended in the summer of 2007, when Chris and I decided to take early retirement in order to have more time to follow our other interests. By this time, I was a Director of a Sixth Form College and my husband, the writer and translator Christopher Buxton had published his first book Far from the Danube.

INTERESTS:

My interests in history became concentrated through the years. I was attracted by the dramatic events, taking place at the end of the First and then the Second Bulgarian Kingdoms and for over fifteen years read and collected relevant materials form a variety of sources. I was well aware that much of the historical data I had been fed in communist times in Bulgaria was not accurate.

I retired early in order to be able to write a book about the life of Kera Tamara - the daughter of Ivan Alexander, who married Sultan Murad I. This story included the histories of those two nations, but also covered the rise of the Ottomans and the fall of the Balkans. It also discusses the role royal marriages played for both kingdoms.

This project is now completed and resulted in a book - Tamara Shishman and Murad I - an Intimate story of the Rise of the Ottomans and the fall of the Balkans. I am now researching and working on my second Project, which is about The European Wives and Favorites of the Ottoman Sultans.

Chris and I are still sharing our time between Burgas and Colchester. Both of us are also involved in translation projects.

For further information, please check www.annabuxton.co.uk