Helen Rappaport is a historian specialising in the Victorian period, with a particular interest in Queen Victoria and the Jamaican healer and caregiver, Mary Seacole. She also has written extensively on late Imperial Russia, the 1917 Revolution and the Romanov family. Her love of all things Victorian springs from her childhood growing up near the River Medway where Charles Dickens lived and worked. Her passion for Russian came from a Russian Special Studies BA degree course at Leeds University. In 2017 she was awarded an honorary D.Litt by Leeds for her services to history. She is also a member of the Royal Historical Society, the Genealogical Society, the Society of Authors and the Victorian Society. She lives in the West Country, and has an enduring love of the English countryside and the Jurassic Coast, but her ancestral roots are in the Orkneys and Shetlands from where she is descended on her father's side. She likes to think she has Viking blood. Helen is the author of 14 published books with 2 forthcoming in 2022: "In Search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Cultural Icon" - Simon & Schuster UK, 17 February 2022 "After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris through Revolution and War" - St Martin's Press USA, 8 March 2022 For her next project she is working on a biography of Juliane of Saxe-Coburg aka Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna of Russia Follow her also on Facebook at: HelenRappaportWriter