Family & Education
Family Background
Ann’s father, George Lyttleton OBE was Managing Director of the family clothing firm The Utilus Coat Company Limited. Her mother, Perle was the eldest daughter of Samuel and Sophie Lyons. Samuel Henry Lyons was a penniless Polish immigrant who came to the United Kingdom in 1902 and worked as a tailor with his Lithuanian wife Sophie who was an expert buttonhole hand. From these small beginnings he built the multi-store men’s clothing chain, Alexandre Ltd that eventually became a part of the John Collier/United Draperies empire. Ann’s brother, Trevor Lyttleton MBE (b. 1936) is a retired solicitor who specialised in the Mental Capacity Act and served on the Deputy Panel of the Court of Protection. Trevor founded the nationwide charity Contact the Elderly (now renamed Re-engage).
Ann’s great-grandfather, George Hollander lived in Wales where her paternal grandmother Gertrude Lubelski was born. He gave Penny Readings to the Welsh miners and his talent for dramatic story-telling was obviously passed down through Gertie to her granddaughter Ann.
Schools
Ann started her education at the age of five at Allerton High School in Leeds where she started piano lessons with Dame Fanny Waterman. From 1947-1949 she was a boarder at Overstone School, Northampton. Her piano teacher was the legendary Vera Lasker, a close friend and associate of Gustav Holst. In 1950/51 she attended Le Collège Féminin de Bouffémont in Paris where apart from becoming proficient in French, she was photographed for ‘Picture Post’ in the studio with the great French couturier, Jacques Fath, met Nancy Mitford and was chosen by Maurice Chevalier to swim in the pool scene featuring him and his co-star Sophie Desmarets in the film “Ma Pomme” (1951).
On her return to the UK, Ann did the year’s course at the Yorkshire Ladies Secretarial College.
Higher Education
Although her teachers at Overstone School recommended Ann as a candidate for A levels and a university education, her misguided uncle, when consulted by Ann’s parents, decreed she should not become a ‘bluestocking’ so reluctantly she had to leave school aged 16. Determined to continue her studies on her own, Ann successfully took A level French, Italian and Spanish in the early 1960’s, studying by correspondence course at home, surrounded by her three young children.
University Of Durham
At the age of 76, to her great delight, Ann was offered and accepted a Holgate Fellowship at Grey College, University of Durham for the Easter Term 2010.
Ann’s Fellowship at Grey College was renewed in 2011, 2012 and 2013 and continued for five years until 2015 when Iain Kerr’s illness made it impractical to travel to and from Durham.
Marriages and Children
In December 1952 at the age of 19, Ann married Neville Ziff and had three children, Jan (b. 1953) Trisha (b. 1956) and Max (b. 1958). On February 5, 2022, |Ann’s eldest daughter Jan died in Paris from cancer.
Jan Ziff was an acclaimed broadcaster and voiceover artist. Not only the co-founder and host of one of world’s longest-running international technology radio shows (Sound*Bytes, nationally on CBS News and at the timeof her untimely death, in its 32nd year of continuous broadcast), Jan also had a second life as the voice of the renowned Heckerty children’s story series, originally created and developed by Ann. Come meet her at youtube.com/loveheckerty
Based in the US and Europe, Jan focused on creating wonderful new stories for kids, and growing Heckerty and Zanzibar’s fan base all around the world! She travelled all over the world both as a BBC correspondent but also later in China where she became well-known as the voice of her animated stories for children.
Trisha Ziff is the founding director of 212BERLIN she is a documentary filmmaker and curator of photography and has worked in the visual arts for over thirty years; running community arts workshops in both photography and film at CAMERAWORK in the East end of London and CAMERAWORK DERRY in the north of Ireland, before moving to Los Angeles and later to Mexico City.
Trisha works independently as a curator, book editor, working with international publishers and in more recent years making documentary films. Trisha is a Guggenheim scholar and recipient of many awards in the USA, England and in Mexico. She has curated at the ICP New York, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Museo de Fotografía Cuatro Caminos, Centro de la Imagen, MUAC, and other museums in Mexico City. The V&A London, Kilmainham Gaol Dublin, and many other international museums.
Her filmography includes:
Her opera prima was Chevolution (2008) for Netflix and Red Envelope. She produced and directed, The Mexican Suitcase (2011) a Mexican/Spanish coproduction; directed, The Man Who Saw Too Much (2015) which won her first Ariel, for best documentary and a second Ariel for Best Score as well as numerous other awards. She completed, Pirate Stories, in 2014 filmed in London, Palestine, Dubai and Mexico City a series of shorts on film piracy and Witkin & Witkin, (2017) a study on the identical twins, photographer Joel-Peter Witkin and his brother painter, Jerome Witkin.
She received NEH development funds for Oaxacalifornia: The Return (2021), revisiting a film she made 25 years ago about Mexican identity in the United States, nominated as best documentary film and best original music at the Ariel awards 2022. In 2019 she received California Humanities support for the film and Sundance Documentary Fund, to her as a filmmaker.
Trisha teaches film and media studies and guest lecturing at various universities in the U.S. Mexico and Europe. She is the recipient of many prestigious awards, from the Arts Council in the UK, NEA and NEH, Bertha Fund, California Humanities, Sundance Documentary Fund and FOPROCINE & EFICINE in Mexico. She is a Gulbenkian and Guggenheim scholar.
Trisha lives between Los Angeles and Mexico City and has one son, Julio.
Currently she is in distribution of Oaxacalifornia: The Return, which premiered early in 2022. She is also in production on a very personal project, Gerry Adams: The Battle for History having filmed three time with Gerry Adams with cinematographer, Seamus McGarvey, which she hopes to complete early 2023. She is also developing with Marina Stavenhagen The Frida Gaze; a film that looks at the life and legacy of Frida Kahlo.
Max Ziff is CEO of Ziff-Ivin Associates and Serdika Financial Services, both founded in 2014 when Max left Houlihan Lokey to set up his own practice with a specific focus on the CIS-CEE and developing Europe region. Max is an expert in financial and operational restructuring and an accomplished expert witness as to value having represented clients in the UK High Court and arbitrations under ICC and UNICITRAL rules.
Max Ziff qualified as a chartered accountant with Price Waterhouse and went on to hold managing director positions at UBS, Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank before joining Houlihan Lokey in 2008, where he became head of European Financial Advisory Services and Global Head of Sovereign Advisory Services.
Max has extensive regional experience working in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Cyprus and Iceland.
Max has four daughters, Ali, Joey, Anna and Steffi and one son Ben. He is the proud grandfather of Nate, Eloisa, George, Xander and Xavier.
It was whilst waiting for her divorce to be finalised that Ann created her unique musical storytelling technique so that she could take her children with her to concerts in Leeds without them getting fidgety and bored. This eventually became her internationally acclaimed Fun with Music®™ sessions, books and recordings.
In February 2023, Ann was contacted from the USA by Douglas Wilcox, who, for over thirty years, had been searching for his biological parents. DNA tests proved without doubt that Douglas is the son of the late Michael Rachlin and therefore, grandson of Ezra Rachlin. He, his wife Sarah and his children have been welcomed by Ann into the Rachlin family. Douglas and Sarah flew over to be part of Ann’s 90th Birthday Celebration in July 2023. They remain in constant touch.