The cold table

1 December 1897 – 14 October 1940

Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897-1940), writer, was born on 1 December 1897 in Sydney, fourth and youngest child of native-born parents Edward Percy Simpson, solicitor, and his wife Anna Maria Alexandra Guerry, daughter of the French Marquis de Guerry de Lauret. Helen grew up at her father's home, St Mervyn's, Point Piper. Her parents separated and her Catholic mother moved to London. Her father, an Anglican, sent her as a boarder to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Rose Bay, and to Abbotsleigh. Arriving in England in April 1914, Helen joined her mother. She went to Oxford in September 1915, joining the Society of Oxford Home Students (later St Anne's College), and read French at the univers…