Introduction
Anna Maria Mann DSG (née Torv; formerly Murdoch; born 30 June 1944) is a Scottish journalist and novelist. She was married to Rupert Murdoch from 1967 to 1999; the couple had three children.
Biography
Early life
Anna Torv was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1944 to Jacob Tõrv, an Estonian-born merchant seaman, and Sylvia Braida, a Scottish drycleaner. Her parents had a drycleaning business in Glasgow, until they emigrated to Australia. When they opened a picnic park outside Sydney and it went bankrupt, her mother left the family household. She has two brothers and one sister. Raised Catholic, she attended a Sisters of Mercy convent school.
Career
She started her journalistic career at the age of 18, working on the Sydney Daily Mirror. She also worked as a journalist for the Australian Daily Telegraph. She later served on the board of directors of News Corporation.
She has written three books. Her first novel, In Her Own Image, is about two sisters who fall in love with the same man on a sheep station close to the Murrumbidgee River.
Personal life
She was married to Rupert Murdoch from 1967 to 1999. They had three children:
- Elisabeth Murdoch (born 1968)
- Lachlan Murdoch (born 1971)
- James Murdoch (born 1972)
When they divorced in 1999, she reportedly received $1.7 billion (including $110 million in cash) from the settlement. She remarried six months later, to William Mann, a financier. They reside in The Hamptons, in a house formerly owned by the philanthropist Yasmin Aga Khan.
According to The Independent, the kidnappers and killers of Muriel McKay, wife of Murdoch’s deputy Alick McKay, had originally intended to kidnap Anna Murdoch instead, but confusion arose when the McKays had made use of one of Murdoch's vehicles.
In 1998, she was made a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.