Novelist

Born: December 12, 1952;

Died: June 5, 2017

HELEN Dunmore, who has died of cancer aged 64, was an award-winning writer best known for her historical novels but accomplished in several genres. Not only was she responsible for 11 collections of poetry, she wrote for children, bringing mermaids to life in the INGO series of novels, and adults, publishing 12 novels, including her last, Birdcage Walk, which was being edited when she was diagnosed with her terminal illness.

However, it was for her historical fiction that Dunmore was particularly celebrated. Her prizewinning debut novel, Zennor in Darkness, explored the life of her literary hero D H Lawrence and his expulsion from Cornwall on suspicion of spying during the First World War. Later, she set The Siege during the Siege of Leningrad, while Birdcage Walk was set in Bristol in 1792, against the backdrop of the French Revolution.

More recently, in an afterword in Birdcage Walk, she wrote about her illness; she also spoke about it in an interview with The Herald earlier this year, saying that she thought there was greater denial about death than in previous generations. “I suppose I have always lived my life as most of us do thinking of this vague, formless future going on and on, which is a bit ridiculous,” she said. “Suddenly, I’m having to think that is not the case.”

Helen Dunmore was born in Beverley in Yorkshire and attended Nottingham High School for Girls in 1970 and then the University of York. After university she taught English as a foreign language in Finland and later became a fully qualified teacher. For many years she taught literature and creative writing courses for the University of Bristol’s Continuing Education Department.

She published her first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, in 1983 – her last, Inside the Wave, was published earlier this year – and then began submitting stories to magazines before Zennor in Darkness was published in 1993. It went on to win the McKitterick Prize; A Spell of Winter, also won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996 and The Siege was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Whitbread. Her 2010 novel The Betrayal was longlisted for the Man Booker prize.

As Dunmore's fame grew, she gave time to support literature and arts organisations around the world. For three years she was on the management committee of the Society of Authors; she also spent a year as chair of the society, and was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997. She later became a trustee of The Royal Literary Fund, which supports authors in need of pensions and grants. She was also a keen critic, reviewing contemporary literature and writing essays and other contributions, with a particular interest in D H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Russian literature.

She also had a lifelong passion for languages. She spoke fluent French and had a passion for French poetry and fiction, travelling to France and other countries to spread her love of literature in translation. She travelled to Russia to research The Siege and The Betrayal, which were kindled by her love of Russian culture, language and literature. Similarly, Counting the Stars, which centres on the Latin poet Catullus, has at its heart her translations from Catullus’ poetry.

Her last novel Birdcage Walk was set in Bristol, where she lived, and centred on Lizzie, who is married to John Diner Tredevant, a builder who is creating a magnificent terrace above the 200-foot drop of the Avon Gorge.

In the afterword to the novel, Dunmore speculated on how the illness she was suffering as she wrote the book might have unconsciously affected her writing. “I suppose that a writer’s creative self must have access to knowledge of which the conscious mind and the emotions are still ignorant, and that a novel written at such a time, under such a growing shadow, cannot help being full of sharper light, rather as a landscape becomes brilliantly distinct in the last sunlight before a storm.”

In her interview with The Herald, she also spoke about how the diagnosis had affected her thoughts on death. “Today, we are in denial about death, less honest than people in the past who knew it was ever present. One thing I have realised coming to the end of my life – it’s still a strange thing to say, a shock – is contemplating my own absence as we all have to, realising that we are all temporary creatures.”

Selina Walker, Dunmore’s editor at Hutchinson, paid tribute after her death. “Helen was very much a writer’s writer and it is no coincidence that her final novel, Birdcage Walk, deals with legacy and recognition: what writers, especially women writers, can expect to leave behind them. She left a legacy of exceptional novels, and the fact that there will now be no more is simply heartbreaking. She was an exceptional person and an exceptional novelist, and her emails – like her writing - were filled with grace and light and sensitivity. I will miss her hugely.”

Throughout her life, Dunmore had a deep attachment to Cornwall and had a family home in St Ives. Zennor in Darkness was set there, and both the INGO series of novels and her picture books incorporated her love for Cornish culture and language.

Helen Dunmore is survived by her husband Francis Charnley, her son Patrick, daughter Tessa and stepson Ollie, and three grandchildren.