Helen Rappaport

Helen Rappaport is the best selling author of Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs, among other titles, which include a fictional colaboration. She won an award for Outstanding Reference Source with her Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers in 2002 from the American Library Association – a book that covers nearly 500 entries on pioneering women.

Helen studied Russian at Leeds University but, she claims, she “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 1990’s she says she “abandoned acting and embraced her second love – history – and with it the insecurities of a writer’s life.”

Helen is a fluent Russian speaker and a specialist in Russian history and 19th century women’s history, and she says her great passion “is being able to winkle out lost stories from the footnotes and to breathe new life and new perspectives into old subjects.”

What made you realise you are a writer?

I think I only truly and honestly finally believed I was a fully paid up writer when I delivered Ekaterinburg in December 2007 – written in record time inside 14 months, closely followed by Conspirator inside 15 months and written during a quite difficult and stressful time in my personal life, and today – today I just finished my next book – a shorter one at 70,000 words - inside five months. It just flew out of my head. And I sat here and thought, yes, well maybe I am good at what I do; maybe I have finally made it.

What book is on your bedside table?

Several: the new biography of Arthur Ransome by Roland Chambers; L. P. Hartley The Shrimp and the Anemone; Gregor von Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Antisemite and Michael Faber’s Crimson Petal and the White

What is the first book you bought with your own money?

Not absolutely sure but I think it was one of the very first of those lovely shiny black Penguin Classics when they first came out – Anton Chekhov’s ‘Lady with the Little Dog and other Stories’. I still have it and treasure it. My love of Russia began with Chekhov.

What achievement in your life are you most proud of?

Personally – obviously my two lovely daughters and my three beautiful grandchildren. Professionally – turning my life around after 20 years in the doldrums as an out of work, broke and miserable actress and becoming a full time writer. To do this I had to make the difficult financial decision of giving up a lucrative job as a freelance academic desk editor to write my own stuff instead of forever tidying up other people’s work

If you were stranded on a desert island which three fictional characters would you like to be there and why?

This is quite difficult for me as I don’t read a lot of fiction, but:

Corny but true – Mr Darcy – who else for an incorrigible romantic like me. Robinson Crusoe – very handy for practical skills, foraging for food and doing the survivalist thing. Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon for esoteric conversation and lots of fascinating gothic mumbo jumbo and conspiracy theories to while away the interminable days

What is the last thing that made you cry?

Oh god everything makes me sob I’m so sentimental. Hate to say it, but probably X factor when they told one of those lovely soulful black girls that she ‘didn’t know how good she was’. But the last BIG cry was that gut wrenching scene in Bleak House (BBC version on DVD) which I watched all through again in the summer – that scene where the heroine, Esther Summerson is reunited with her lost mother Lady Deadlock. Anna Maxwell Martin (one of our finest young actresses) and Gillian Anderson had me crying and crying absolute buckets. Maybe it’s the mother in me – but it struck such a nerve.

What phrase do you find playing most often in your head?

Will they like it/me/the book before author talks, phone interviews and publication day.

What would you not be prepared to do, whatever the price?

Kill someone or something, obviously; other than that, I guess it would be to have sex with someone I didn’t fancy

When you have an urge to go shopping what is it for?

To be honest it doesn’t hit me that often. Definitely not chocolate and clothes – well I would have said so ten years ago but I’m not that bothered now. Nowadays it would be to have splurges on gorgeous dangly earrings.

Rolling Stones or Beatles?

Oh Beatles no doubt about it. Why? Because I sat in Row B at the Winter Gardens Margate in 1962 and screamed and screamed and screamed … they are absolutely fundamentally part of my growing up and part of who I am now.

Do you have a favourite Russian word?

Toska. It’s the Russian word for longing – a particular kind of longing, of nostalgia for home and country and one’s own. It’s what all Russian exiles suffered from.

If you were a 19th Century women who would it be and why?

Whatshername in Possession or the wife or lover of a pre-Raphaelite painter; failing that some Romantic poet’s talented in her own right muse.

Why did Mary Seacole capture your imagination so much?

Because of her humanity, her compassion and her indomitable spirit. Here was a woman who crossed all the classic divides of her time – race, gender and social classes and never ever let anyone put her down. I love the way she bucked the system and did it her own way. A truly inspiring woman with a big warm Jamaican heart.

Which of those you have written about, fictional or non-fictional, do you like most?

Elizabeth Evans, Margaret Kerwin and Ellen Butler – all of them stalwart rank and file army wives who followed the British Army through thick and thin during the Crimean War and suffered with them. I have to admit to a soft spot for Grand Duchess Maria – of all the Romanov girls, the most warm-heartedly Russian, loving and kind. My latest character Madame Rachel has absolutely gripped me – I don’t exactly like her but my god she had chutzpah!

Talking head, writer, actress, what order do you like them listed?

Well the actress thing is long gone, so no. 3; I had one or two good moments way back in the eighteies but it is a transient and fickle profession and I’m glad I got out of it. no. 2 I absolutely love doing talking head spots – mainly because writing is such an isolated life that the minute I am let loose on an audience or on film I can’t stop talking . I just love meeting readers; it makes the downside of writing worthwhile. 1. Writer – well that now, as I explained above, is fundamentally, finally where I have arrived. I always was a very late starter but I to have say after a lifetime’s financial insecurity as a self employed person I at last feel, despite the recession and insecurities of my life still, that writing was what I always had been heading towards. My life has brought me to it by a long sometimes frustrating and circuitous route. So I feel I have a lot of catching up to do and that panics me sometimes. I just pray I keep my health, strength and my marbles, because I want to keep on writing till I drop – or until no one wants to buy my books any more.

What one thing did you commonly say about yourself when you were an actress, that you still say now as a writer?

I guess it must be that I haven’t yet had a chance to fulfill my potential. That’s true of the acting, but as a writer, I really believe that I am finally hitting it.

What is it you like so much about Scott that you agreed to doing the Book Swap night?

He’s a touchy feely chatty new age man – a woman’s kind of good mate. The kind you feel you could talk to candidly about anything and that he would take it in his stride. The kind of man you can have a few drinks with, a good laugh, get drunk etc. He’s kind and direct and down to earth. I really value his interest in my work. There are a lot of phonies out there in the biz but he isn’t one of them. What you see is what you get.

What do you hope to achieve with the evening?

Good conversation and a laugh and best of all to meet new people and maybe even make a few new friends. It’s all about the readers.

Can you give me one good reason to come along?

I think I am like Scott – direct, open and I’ll say what I think. So yes I feel anyone coming will get an honest perspective from me on my particular writer’s life, hopes and aspirations. And hopefully a few laughs too.

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