helena frith powell

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Category: Sainte Cecile

France

4th November 2017

Beauty and life tips from French women

France

4th November 2017

Life and beauty tips from the French

France

3rd November 2017

Observations and insight from 20 years as a woman in France

Missing

15th August 2017

By the time it got to Saturday evening, none of us could remember exactly when we’d last seen him, we only knew he was missing. We’d rolled in at 2am that morning after an evening of wine and music with an octogenarian friend of ours (these 80 somethin …

Back at Sainte Cecile

1st August 2012

In one of my past jobs I had a particularly irritating boss who used to make me send her a daily itinerary of what I was up to. So when I wasn’t sitting at my desk where she could see me I would have to let her know where I was. This itinerary was usua …

Return to Sainte Cecile

27th August 2010

We have been home for a week and are getting ready to leave again. I am not quite sure what to think. Part of me wants to sort out the whole house, unpack all the boxes and just never ever leave again and yet part of me thinks ‘thank God we don’t live …

Our poor house

10th October 2009

Sainte Cecile was burgled yesterday. I got the news from a friend in the village and felt like weeping. The children were even more upset than I was. “You have to remember it is only things,” I told Olivia, trying to keep calm. “It is not a person.” Sh …

Falling in love again

20th December 2008

How could I ever have left him? Or is it her? Actually I always think of Sainte Cecile as feminine, I suppose Cecile is. And as for selling up…..what a stupid, mad, cruel and short-termist notion. I can’t tell you how nice it is to be home. There is …

Back to Black

29th January 2008

It is not every day there are twenty men at the bottom of my drive in tight uniforms. But yesterday I was surrounded. Next to our house is a plot of land owned by a local man. Yesterday morning he decided to burn some shrubs. What he had not factored i …

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.

© 2023 Helena Frith Powell
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