Helen studied Russian at Leeds University, but ill-advisedly rejected a career in the Foreign Office and opted for the acting profession instead. After appearing on British TV and in films until the mid-1990s she gave up acting and embraced her second love - history - and with it the equal insecurities of a writer's life. She started out by contributing to biographical and historical reference works for publishers such as Cassell, Reader's Digest and Oxford University Press. Between 1999 and 2003 she wrote three history reference books back-to-back for a leading US academic publisher. She now specializes as a 19th century historian and Russianist. Her experience as a former actress and successful media presenter has informed her highly successful translations of all seven of Chekhov's plays for the National, Almeida and Royal Shakespeare Theatres, working in conjunction with playwrights such as Trevor Griffiths, David Hare, Nick Wright and David Lan. In 2002 she was Russian consultant to the National Theatre's Tom Stoppard trilogy, The Coast of Utopia.

MAJOR TITLES

Just published...

No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War (Aurum Press, 2007)

Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion. ABC-Clio Press (Oxford/Santa Barbara, USA), April 2003.

Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, 2 vols. ABC-Clio, 2001. RUSA award-winner, American Librarians' Association, USA, 2002.

Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion. ABC-Clio 1999.


ARTICLES, TALKS AND CONFERENCE PAPERS INCLUDING:

Mary Seacole and my discovery of her lost portrait: a lecture given at the National Portrait Gallery (September 2005); Manchester and Birmingham City Art Galleries autumn/winter 2005/6; Citigroup Canary Wharf 2006, in conjunction with the loan of the portrait to a touring exhibition 'Black Victorians'.

The Invitation That Never Came: Mary Seacole after the Crimea. Leader article in the February 2005 issue of History Today

Mary Seacole: Separating Myth from Reality in the Search for the Real Woman. Mary Seacole Study Day at the Florence Nightingale Museum, St Thomas's Hospital, October, 2004

St Giles' Oxford Lunchtime Talk: The Quaker Tradition of Pacifist Campaigning (Nov. 2002)

Stalin and the Photographer - on the US photojournalist James Abbe (History Today, 2001).

The Origins of Women's Peace Campaigning (History Today 2002).

RECENT FILM/TV/ RADIO/PRESS

** Radio 4 Woman's Hour: interview about women in the Crimean War to tie in with publication of No Place for Ladies, February 2007

**Channel 4 TV: Historical Consultant and 'talking head' for The Real Angel of the Crimea, Mary Seacole documentary,transmitted in Seacole's bicentenary year, 2005; repeated February 2007.

**Radio 4 Woman's Hour, BBC TV London news, ITV Central South News and various Oxford and Birmingham local radio stations through 2005: in connection with Helen's discovery and rescue of a lost portrait of Mary Seacole now on loan to the National Portrait Gallery, London.

**Coverage in The Times, Guardian, Independent and Daily Telegraph 11 January 2005 of the launch of the Mary Seacole portrait at the National Portrait Gallery

**Dublin Commercial Radio, March 2003, 10-minute live interview on the legacy of Joseph Stalin, to tie in with 50th anniversary of his death

**BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour : co-presenting six slots, 'Women Who Made a Difference', based on key women in my book on British women social reformers (2001-2)