Helen Audrey Beecham (21 July 1915 – 31 January 1989) was an English poet, teacher and historian.
She was born in
Weaverham
Weaverham is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire in England. Just off the A49, it is just to the west of Northwich and south of the River Weaver, and has a population of ...
in 1915. Her grandfather was
Sir Joseph Beecham, 1st Baronet
Sir Joseph Beecham, 1st Baronet (8 June 1848 – 23 October 1916) was a British businessman.
Beecham was the eldest son of Thomas Beecham and Jane Evans. He played a large part in the growth and expansion of his father's medicinal pill busin ...
, eldest son of
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, Order of the Companions of Honour, CH (29 April 18798 March 1961) was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic and the Roya ...
, who had created a fortune with
Beecham's Pills
__NOTOC__
Beecham's Pills were a laxative first marketed about 1842 in Wigan, Lancashire. They were invented by Thomas Beecham (1820–1907), grandfather of the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (1879–1961).
Commercial history
The pills themselves ...
. Her uncle was the conductor Sir
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, Order of the Companions of Honour, CH (29 April 18798 March 1961) was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic and the Roya ...
and her father devoted time to spending his inheritance.
[ She took PPE at ]Somerville College
Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...
in Oxford. She left with a second class degree and went to live in Paris in the group that included Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical ref ...
. She made a lasting friendship with the writers Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell (; 27 February 1912 – 7 November 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. He was the eldest brother of naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell.
Born in India to British colonial pare ...
and Anais Nin.[
Beecham left Oxford and took a job at the ]University of Nottingham
The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...
in 1950; she lectured and headed Nightingale Hall.[Rachel Trickett, ‘Beecham, (Helen) Audrey (1915–1989)’, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 201]
accessed 13 March 2017
/ref> One anecdote tells of how when faced with demonstrating students intent on occupying one of the buildings she hid the weapons but supplied them with toilet paper. She memorably
noted that revolutionaries frequently forgot the loo rolls.
John Izbicki, 1999, ''The Independent'', Retrieved 13 March 2017
Sir Maurice Bowra
Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra, (; 8 April 1898 – 4 July 1971) was an English classical scholar, literary critic and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the Univer ...
, Warden of Wadham and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford was engaged to her. Bowra, a homosexual
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
, explained his engagement by saying "buggers can't be choosers".Christopher Hollis Christopher Hollis may refer to:
* Christopher Hollis (politician)
Maurice Christopher Hollis, known as Christopher Hollis (2 December 1902 – 5 May 1977), was a British schoolmaster, university teacher, author and Conservative politician.
Life
...
, ''Oxford in the Twenties'' (1976), p. 22. "Allegedly," according to Mitchell in ''Maurice Bowra: A Life'' (2009), p. 144 In 1957, she published her first book of poetry, ''The Coast of Barbary''.
Death
Helen Audrey Beecham died in Churchill Hospital
The Churchill Hospital is a teaching hospital in Oxford, England. It is managed by the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
History
The original hospital on the site was built in 1940 with the intention of providing medical aid to ...
, Churchill Hospital
The Churchill Hospital is a teaching hospital in Oxford, England. It is managed by the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
History
The original hospital on the site was built in 1940 with the intention of providing medical aid to ...
, Oxford, England in 1989, aged 73, from asthma.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beecham, Audrey
1915 births
1989 deaths
People from Northwich
English women poets
Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford
20th-century English poets
20th-century English women writers
20th-century English educators
20th-century English historians
Respiratory disease deaths in England
Deaths from asthma
English women non-fiction writers
British women historians
20th-century women educators