BBC7

Helen was born in 1924 in Nottingham, where lots of her stories are set. She started writing when she was seven years old and went on to write more than 100 childrens books!

She was best-known for writing Lizzie Dripping, the story of a girl and her witch friend who would sit on top of a gravestone knitting. This was made into a BBC TV series in the 1970s. Helen went on to write TV scripts based on books by Enid Blyton and E Nesbitt.

Her other books include Moondial, The Bongleweed and ten very funny books about accident-prone family The Bagthorpes. She won the Phoenix Award in 1988 for her book The Night Watchmen and in 2000 she was awarded a Bafta children's writer award.

Helen would embarrass her two daughters by making them take her books to parties as presents. She always had a great sense of humour - when a burglar stole eight statues from her garden she replaced one of them with an inflatable snowman.

When asked to give advice to young writers, she said "Get yourself a notebook and try to write something short, every single day. Every writer under the sun must read, read, read!."

Helen died in 2005, aged 71.