helena frith powell

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Author: Helena

The French role model (again)

5th February 2013

Just after Christmas we went to a party at the home of a French family we are quite friendly with. Like us, they have three children aged between nine and 13. Unlike us, these children look and behave like they have leapt straight from the pages of a ‘ …

Change is good…I hope

30th January 2013

Change is good I keep telling myself, as I lie awake at 3am most mornings contemplating the magnitude of the plans we have. In April Leo goes off to boarding school in Surrey. All being well, the girls will go too. Not to Woodcote where he is headed, a …

In search of a school……

9th January 2013

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a middle-class mother in possession of daughters must be in want of a school. Or at least an expat middle-class mother who is utterly horrified at the level of education on offer where she lives. Next week th …

Lawyers, orphans and the pathetic Mr Putin

28th December 2012

Several years ago,when I was still editing the magazine Central European (a must-read) I used to travel to Russia every few weeks to write a supplement we ran called Russiamoney. This was back in the early 1990s when Russia was just opening up, and the …

Anyone for Christmas spirit?

19th December 2012

As I write, Bea and Leonardo are on the balcony, playing cards and singing along to Christmas songs. Every day I am told exactly how many days remain until the big event. Every few minutes they check under the tree to see if there are any more presents …

All I want for my birthday…

15th December 2012

Tomorrow is my birthday. There is always a lot of pressure to enjoy one’s birthday, to have a perfect day doing whatever you want to do, so I am slightly panicking and wondering what on earth to do. I’m not really sure what my perfect day would be, it’ …

Unacustomed as I am to public speaking…

27th November 2012

Tomorrow I have a terrifying task to perform. At 2pm I am to stand up in front of the WHOLE of Leo’s year at school and give a speech about what it’s like being a journalist. Nothing, not even my first appearance on Richard & Judy, or walking up th …

Anyone for (children’s) tennis? No thanks

11th November 2012

“This is not Wimbledon,” the organiser told the assembled 20 or so children and their parents. “It’s just a fun day out.” We all listened, but no one took any notice. “It’s just a game,” he added hopefully. “We’re here to have fun.” This was the third …

Angst, what angst?

3rd November 2012

I hated being a teenager. I was utterly angst-ridden. Not so much in the existentialist ‘why am I here?’ department, but just about everything else. I was too skinny, too foreign (at the time practically the only brown-haired, brown-eyed girl in the wh …

Good Housekeeping Column September 2012

29th October 2012

Before moving to the UAE we lived in France. I didn’t make many friends, French women are notoriously difficult to make friends with, but those friends I did have spent most of the summer talking about just one thing: la rentrée. La rentrée is the Fren …

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

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