Anne Shelton was born in 1923 in Camberwell, south-east London. She made her first record in 1936, at the age of 12 with the Jack Hylton orchestra under her real name, Pat Sibley.  However, it wasn’t until four years later, when she changed her name to Anne Shelton, that she shot to national prominence, singing with the band of the legendary Bert  Ambrose.
 
During the war years, Shelton’s radio appearances and recorded output was phenomenal. She scored major successes with songs including, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “You’ll Never Know”, “A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square” and “Silver Wings In The Moonlight”. Furthermore, Shelton was the first artist to record the marching song “Lili Marlene” in English. Indeed, an English lyric was especially written for her, and Shelton’s vocal was used over the airwaves to counteract a Nazi propaganda campaign during the conflict in North Africa. As a result, she became known as ‘the British Lili Marlene girl’, an epithet she proudly retained throughout her long career.  In 1944, Shelton sang with Glenn Miller (when he was in Britain leading the American Band of the AEF) and duetted with the incomparable Bing Crosby. Indeed, there was a period during World War Two when Shelton was more popular than Vera Lynn.
 
During the early 1950s, Shelton was probably the foremost British female popular singer. In 1951, she became the first British artist to tour the United States coast-to-coast, headlining at the iconic Copacabana nightspot in New York. In the mid-1950s, Shelton scored a UK number one hit with “Lay Down Your Arms”, the recording of which was engineered by the pioneering soundman, Joe Meek. She also starred in her own television shows and was a constant on radio and television throughout the fifties and sixties.
 
However, Shelton was something of an enigma. She closely guarded the actual year of her birth and the status of her relationship with David Reid, her partner of 45 years. In this comprehensive biography, John Temple both gets to grips with the phenomenal vocal talent Shelton undoubtedly was and sensitively examines aspects of her personal life which thus far have remained something of a mystery. Shelton was simply one of the very best of British artists and Temple candidly tells her amazing story against the backdrop of the times through which she lived. 
 
“Anne was one of my favourite singers. She had a depth and quality rare in those days... She was in a class of her own.”  Petula Clark, CBE
 
“… [Shelton] was very graceful, she seemed to typify everything that the era in which she sang, stood for …”   Peter Tomlinson, DL (British Broadcaster)
 
“A fillet steak in a Wimpy world.”  Denis Norden, CBE