Helen's Early Years

Helen was born in England and christened in Stirling, Scotland, but soon afterwards the family....

....returned to Burma where they spent the next seven years. Helen describes her life there as ruled by routine but very different from a life in the UK. The growing family had a governess, Kenzie - Florence McKenzie, with Christian, Helen and Noel, above - and lived in a series of large bungalows with servants. In the hot, wet season they moved up-country to a cooler climate, to Loiyan, and in 1919 Christian, Helen, Noel and their mother spent three months in India staying with their aunt Lil, who had married Stanley Reed, editor of the 'Times of India'.

When the family returned to the UK in 1920 Helen went to school in Stirling until the family moved to Sale, where she briefly attended a small private school until she was nine, when she enrolled in the Sale County High School for girls, where she stayed until she left school at sixteen.

In her autobiography Helen writes with affection about her holidays, particularly those the family took in the Lake District. Their father would lead the girls high into the hills in all weathers, over great distances, and they visited historic remains such as a Roman camp. Every Wednesday they had 'peche melba', they went swimming in the nearby river, they wrote stories together, and they read avidly.

After matriculating in eight subjects, three at Distinction level, and also having passed Latin at Higher level, Helen entered the sixth form - picture shows her, second from right, front row. She planned to complete her Highers, go to university, and achieve her ambition to become a teacher, but her mother insisted that if she wanted to teach she had to go to a school in Liverpool for her final year and then to Liverpool University, for this would enable her to get a grant.

Her last months in Manchester were very unhappy, her mother having moved to Eastbourne with Sandy and her father depressed and unwell. Noel was a boarder at Godstowe, a boarding school, and Christian was at the Slade in London, so Helen had to try to keep the household going. Even after there was a reconciliation between her father and mother, her mother kept threatening to leave. Worse, Sandy was sent off to Noel's boarding school at the age of four and, unsurprisingly, wasn't happy, all of which made the family even more gloomy.

All this, and the fact that she had ceased to enjoy school life, persuaded Helen to leave school and join her sister, Christian, who had left the Slade and was planning to take a secretarial course in London.