Anita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art till her retirement in 1988. She published her first novel in 1981, and her 25th in 2009. Hotel du Lac won the Booker Prize in 1984. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner has published a number of volumes of art criticism. She lives in Chelsea, London.