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My friend Frank

15th December 2006 by Helena Leave a Comment  

My friend Frank died this morning. He had been ill with cancer for several years so we were all expecting it. But it is so much sadder than I imagined it would be. I suppose the reason it’s so sad is that Frank was so special. Everyone thinks their friends are special but Frank really was. He was a walking historical encyclopaedia and also a world authority on opera and ballet. His day job was politics, which he wrote about brilliantly. But more than anything he was funny. When I heard yesterday that he was in a coma my daughter Olivia, aged seven, asked me what was wrong.

“I don’t want Frank to die,” I said.

“None of us want Frank to die,” she said. “He makes us laugh.”

“And he’s Swedish,” added Bea, aged six.

Frank was many things, but he was not Swedish. He was, however, a brilliant mimick and would speak to the girls in pretend Swedish which they loved. I always remember a story he would tell about being on a London bus and pretending to be Russian. The conductor was charmed, called him comrade and let him travel for free.

We first met him about four years ago when he and his wife bought a house down here. He loved the region and village life. He would often sit in the local bar drinking a pression with a local man who claims to have discovered the Internet. My husband and he followed their local rugby team, Bèziers, in several defeats and would go on mad day-trips to places like Vichy, a four-hour drive each way. He called him “dear boy” which I found old-fashioned and charming. He called me “Hurricane Hels”, which I will miss, as well as everything else about him.


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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.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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