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Helena Drysdale |
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Helena Drysdale was born in London and has a degree in History
and Art History from Trinity College, Cambridge. After a brief stint working for
Walker Books, she wrote reviews of contemporary art for Artscribe Magazine, of
which she became co-editor.
In 1985 she wrote Alone through China and Tibet
(Constable 1986), followed by Dancing with the Dead (Hamish Hamilton
1991), which was also made into a documentary by Granada/WNET. In 1995 Sinclair
Stevenson published her award-winning book, Looking for George,
(published in paperback by Picador ), and in 2001 Mother Tongues, Travels
through Tribal Europe was published by Picador.
Her new book, Strangerland, a poignant, dramatic, and
true story of pioneering in the back bush of nineteenth century New Zealand, was
published by Picador in 2006
Helena is married to painter Richard Pomeroy and they live in
Somerset with their two daughters.
Please click here to go to Helena's website.
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Alone through China and Tibet
With a Foreword by George Patterson
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The orient, with its totally different customs and beliefs, still retains an
air of deep mystery, and until recently it would have been inconceivable for
a young girl in her early twenties to travel alone to such far-flung places
as China and Tibet. But in 1985, in time for the Chinese New Year and the
accompanying celebrations, Helena Drysdale arrived in Canton and spent the
next few months working her way from the lush hills of Hainan Island, across
the wastelands of the north-west to Tibet, and then to Nepal.
Her experiences along the way range from the macabre to the hilarious: she
was hailed as a visiting VIP in Hainan, she took part in a spectacular
Lantern Festival, the witnessed the dawn Sky Burial in Tibet. Exploring back
streets, markets, temples — on bicycles, buses and trains, Helena travelled
and lived with ordinary people, making friends and visiting their families.
The result is a vivid and authentic picture of life in China today.
From time to time
other travellers crossed her path including Patrick, a Belgian who rescued
her from hospital and Martin, a rootless Swiss communist. For part of her
journey Helena followed in the footsteps of Alexandra David-Neel, the first
western woman to reach Lhasa sixty years earlier.
For more information, please
email us. |
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Dancing with
the Dead
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Helena Drysdale was just about to leave for Madagascar
when family papers in a crumbling house in Devon revealed that her ancestors
had traded there during the nineteenth century. There were suggestions of
piracy and slave trading. Madagascar was not their only haunt: there was
also Zanzibar, with its plump sultans, and the Comoro Islands. Helena and
her photographer husband, Richard Pomeroy, set off to follow in their wake
and seek out any lingering family connections.
On dhows, cargo boats, dug-out canoes, in lorries and on
foot, their journey took them from old colonial Mombassa to the winding
alleys of Zanzibar, from Moslem ceremonies of ‘second marriage’ in the
Comoro Islands to ancestor-worship in Madagascar and annual exhumations of
the dead. They are travellers in a traveller’s world: everybody has come by
sea from somewhere else; everybody shares ancestral dreams of leaving and
arriving.
This is not only a story of the wilder parts of these
Indian Ocean islands, of their culture and history, but also a story of our
relationship with our ancestors. In these rootless days when we abandon our
ancestors to some numbered cemetery plot, are we losing our sense of
belonging anywhere?
Dancing with the Dead is intensely romantic and
utterly delightful. Helena Drysdale writes with a freshness and vigour which
make every page of this unusual and engaging travel book sparkle with
pleasure.
For more information, please
email us.
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