Real name: Helen Margaret Moncrieff; famed cellist who became children's author in her 60s as Helen McClelland.

Born into Scottish 'legal' aristocracy. Both parents encouraged her musical promise from an early age and after years at the private music school run by Ruth Waddell in Edinburgh, they insisted she take a music degree at the University of Edinburgh (which she considered a waste of time) and then study the cello with Pierre Fournier in Paris, where she lived for most of two years.

The experience in Paris was to influence not just her musical development but also her attitudes to life. She returned with fluent French and a lifelong attachment to foods then considered extraordinary in the British kitchen.

In 1957 she married Alexander Kelly the two, as a duo and in combination with well-known musical friends, made many concert and broadcast appearances.

Her writing was at first separate from her music: it was not until 2001 that she published a novel, Time and Again, under her own name. As Helen McClelland, she was best known for her biography of the school story writer, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. In 1995 she published a pastiche novel, Visitors for the Chalet School.