Helen  was quite one of the most amazing characters one could ever meet with in one’s life, a complex person of having  been  brought up  as  part of the living  natural  tropical world on a tea estate in  upcountry Ceylon at an elevation of 4,750 ft.  We are all to a large extent a prisoner of our childhoods and in Helen’s  case it  was  a world of exotic butterflies, chameleons, humming birds etc. all set in a beautiful sub tropical garden full of bougainvilleas, jacarandas, bright yellow cassias, and cannas to name a few,    but  above all orchids grew everywhere in profusion as  Father was one of the leading orchid enthusiasts in Ceylon. In the front of the enormous bungalow with its 120 ft long corridor  was the most spectacular view imaginable with the hill plunging 2,000 ft and views across the  Welimada Valley to the far ranges of Haputale (6,500ft)  and the Horton Plains of over 7,000 ft.  The house was staffed by about 8  of the most charming and gentle Tamil and Sinhalese servants, gardeners, etc. who maintained the home, worked in the garden, tended the cows, and horses and  maintained the  cars. This simple comfortable lifestyle, without frills  homestead, was very self  sufficient , growing fruits, vegetables, chickens, rabbits etc for the table. The scenery into  which Hugh, Helen and I were all brought up as young children,  has coloured and been a foundation for all our expansive lives, ever since  in stark contrast to the “row of houses” suburban mentality one gets in an urban  western  environment. This upbringing  was one which  our Mother Madeleine had partially adapted to, but being brought up as a Londoner , she could never really fully come to grips with the wild expansive nature of her children. She would constantly reiterate:
“ How could someone so ordinary as me have 3 such wild children who do not know the thought of fear and are all so independent ,and have such free spirits”!  Luckyland our home with its beautiful self sufficient isolation, influenced all our lives and each in turn  has  tried to recreate and capture its magic across the world, from Africa with Hugh, New Zealand with Helen, and in England with myself Michael!
Helen had always a most powerful will and quite the most headstrong nature. My first experience of noticing this was when I was 4 and Helen 10 and she was being chased and hurried up to get into the bath, which she proceeded to do immersing herself  wearing all her clothes....she was as usual in khaki shorts and a shirt. “ Don’t shout....you asked me to get into the bath and I here am in it...What more do you want?” she retorted to a completely distraught Mother. Ten years later in the Navy when she warned about her hair being too long for regulations, she picked up a pair of scissors and hacked the offending length off, flinging it in front of her Lieutenant who then promptly charged her for gross insubordination!
In 1937 when aged 12 she went with Mother to board with her friend Mrs Nestor Inglis who was now Headmistress of Tudor Hall School, Chislehurst , Kent  where  Mother and her sister Helen had attended from 1909. So Helen was as it were living as guest and in the home of the school where she boarded whilst Mother like so many of the colonial families of the time returned back to Ceylon to come back a year later to see her and Hugh who was then at Bradffield College, Berkshire. Nestor Inglis was a passionate teacher, not only within  the norms of the usual school work,  but in developing all the broader awareness of life around, particularly a love of plants, history, art etc. The girls at the school which was attended by the usual middle income families, was obviously very influenced by the increasing crescendo of events on the continent. This  was a period of conflicting ideologies each of  which was bound to clash with one another  leaving fragments embedded in the youth of an entire  generation. Some were attracted to the communist ideal  centred on Russia, whilst   others whose sympathies like the Mitfords’  lay with Hitler in Nazi Germany. Here the Nordic ideal of willpower, eugenics and the blond “master-race” had an attraction especially at time when Great Britain ruled over about of one third of the worlds’ surface. These conflicting forces on a young impressionable girl would lead to lasting influences and even scars.  One was that Helen felt uncomfortable with herself with her pretty yet very olive complexion and her Mediterranean ancestry. So everything French/ Mediterranean was considered  dirty and degenerate etc, whereas  everything Nordic such as Swedish was heavenly and ideal.  Also   the idea that Willpower, and  a Spartan lifestyle were the driving forces one needed to achieve happiness,  were all to become the building blocks of her character. 
Two years after her joining  Tudor Hall, War was declared in September 1939 and the school being in the direct line of Bombers flying from the continent, was evacuated to Burnt Norton near  Chipping  Campden in Gloucestershire, one of the most beautiful villages  in England, nestling in the rolling Cotswold Hills made up of hard oolitic limestone.  Here also evacuated and  joining her for the duration of the War was Nestor’s  brother, Air Marshall  Goddard and his two sons John and David. The Air Marshall was rarely there,  being on military duties, so Helen grew up with the two Goddard boys of a similar age to her as brothers.  The school with its companionship of the Goddards, its intellectual milieu and its simple rural surroundings were all to prove, like for so many other evacuees a wonderful broadening to her education. Helen became an expert horsewoman, a natural in the saddle, riding, jumping and making her home roaming and riding  over the wolds.  The war meanwhile had trapped her parents in Ceylon...submarines had isolated travel in the Northern waters of the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Mother had in 1940 taken me to Melbourne Australia, only a year later to be under pressure from Japan’s entry into the War. She tried to escape back to Ceylon but we ended up as prisoners of the Germans &Japanese until release at the end of 1945.

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