BIOGRAPHY
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For an interview with Helen
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orn in Bromley, England, Helen Rappaport studied Russian at Leeds University but ill-advisedly rejected
suggestions of a career in the Foreign Office and opted for the acting profession. After appearing on British TV
and in films until the early 1990s she abandoned acting and embraced her second love - history - and with it the insecurities of a writer’s life.
She started out contributing to biographical and historical reference works for publishers such as Cassell, Reader’sDigest, and Oxford University Press.
Between 1999 and 2003 she wrote three books back-to-back for a leading US reference publisher:
Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion, the award-winning An Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers and Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion.
Her first trade title was No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War ( Aurum press, 2007 ). She followed this with Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs (Hutchinson 2008),
which became a best seller in the USA, published by St.Martin’s Press as The Last days of the Romanovs:Tragedy at Ekaterinburg on 3 February 2009. Her latest book is Conspirator: Lenin in Exile, (Hutchinson September 2009) to be published by Basic books in the USA in April 2010.
Helen’s latest title is a new departure - a Victorian true-crime story: Beautiful for Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer, published by novelist Susan Hill’s imprint, Long Barn Books. Helen hopes to continue this Victorian strand of shorter books with the stories of other lost or forgotten figures from Victorian history.
Meanwhile, her next major title is Memorial:The Death of Prince Albert, a
socio-historical study of the impact of the Prince Consort’s premature death in
1861 on England, the monarchy, art and culture, to be published by Hutchinson,
autumn 2011 for the 150th anniversary of his death; an American edition, by
St.Martin’s Press, will follow, date to be announced.
Helen’s only foray into fiction, so far, has been a collaboration with
William Horwood on a historical thriller, Dark Hearts of Chicago, published by
Hutchinson in April 2007.
Helen is a fluent Russian speaker and a specialist in Russian history and
19th century women’s history, her great passion being to winkle out lost
stories from the footnotes and to breathe new life and new perspectives into
old subjects.
In 2005 she was historical consultant and talking head on a Channel 4
documentary The Real Angel of the Crimea about the Jamaican nurse, Mary
Seacole. In 2010 she will be talking head on a National Geographic documentary
about the Murder of the Romanovs.
Since the mid-70s Helen has also become well-known as a Russian
translator in the theatre, working with British playwrights on new versions of
Russian plays. She has translated all seven of Chekhov’s plays, including
Ivanov for Tom Stoppard’s new version that was a huge critical success at the
Donmar Season at Wyndham’s in 2008. In 2002 she was Russian consultant to
the National Theatre’s Tom Stoppard trilogy, The Coast of Utopia.
A passionate Victorianist and Russianist, she is a member of the Victorian
Society, the Society of Genealogists, the Society of Authors, The Biographers’ Club
and Writers in Oxford. She is also an academic associate of St Bede’s Hall, Oxford.
Writer • Historian • Russianist
HELEN