helena frith powell

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France’s shame

8th February 2007

Yesterday I spent the day in Toulouse with Denise Epstein, the daughter of Irene Nemirovsky (see ‘We’ve never had it so good’ blog below). Ever since I heard about Irene being carted off Auschwitz in front of her two daughters and read her brilliant bo …

The greatest living Englishman

5th February 2007

I am at Stansted Airport, a strange place to be at 4.30 am but my flight leaves at 6 am. Yesterday I had one of those days that make me wonder why we ever left England. I went for a long walk first thing in the morning, watched the mist rise over the s …

How the other half lives

2nd February 2007

I receive an unusual text message today. “Your chauffeur, Michael, has arrived,” it reads. “Silver Mercedes E Class.” Thank God it’s an E Class, I wouldn’t be seen dead in anything else. I swan out of the Lagham Hotel accompanied by a little man carryi …

You can take the girl away from the flu but

1st February 2007

….you can’t take the flu away from the girl. So here I am in London. Yesterday was a great day and further to my report (see blog below on Blighty) I can safely say that at least viewed from central London Britain is a very nice place to be. The sun …

The birds and the bees…..

30th January 2007

Olivia is at home ill and watching Grey’s Anatomy. There is a girl in the episode she’s watching who suffers from spontaneous orgasms (sounds better than flu). Olivia has just asked me what’s wrong with her. “She keeps having sort of, well, fits,” I te …

The Mozart of tennis

28th January 2007

Two days ago Olivia said to me; “Mummy, you’re never ill.” Well, now I am. I feel like death. My head hurts, my throat hurts, in fact my whole body hurts. I am constantly coughing and sneezing. My husband has had the same thing and now two of the three …

300,000 Frenchmen can’t be wrong….

27th January 2007

A survey out today by a US magazine called International Living places Britain at number 37 in the world of best countries to live. We share this dubious honour with Greece, Ecuador, Cyprus, Iceland and Lithuania. Apart from Greece I have never been to …

Flat as a pancake

25th January 2007

I have just been to collect the children at school and see that something called a Mammobile is parked in the main square. This is, I assume, a travelling mammogram that will test women for breast cancer. Personally I would rather be run over by it tha …

We’ve never had it so good

24th January 2007

I am reading Suite Francaise at the moment, as good a book as I have ever read. It is about France during the second-world war, written by Irene Nemirovsky, a Russian-Jew who lived in France and was carted off to Auschwitz in front of her two daughters …

The definition of sex

23rd January 2007

Carrying on the lust theme, I heard an interesting definition of sex as we drove home from our weekend in Uzes on Sunday. Bea (pictured left) was busy telling Olivia that she had had sex with her best friend Manon. As you can imagine, I stopped map-rea …

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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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