Helena Attlee is a
non-fiction author who specialises in garden writing. She
approaches her subject through cultural history and
biography. She has made Italy her special subject.
Italian Gardens:
a Cultural History was published
by Frances Lincoln in 2006. As a
graduate in Italian she was able to bring much new
material to a familiar subject. The book was widely and
well reviewed and has taken its place on the reading
lists at various universities, including Birkbeck in
London and NYU in America. In 2008 Frances Lincoln published
The Gardens
of Portugal, now also
published in Portuguese. 2009 saw the publication
of The Gardens
of Wales by
Frances Lincoln, and
Charles
Latham’s Gardens of Italy, illustrated by
Latham’s photographs taken in 1903, and published
by Aurum Press.
The Gardens
of Japan was published in
March 2010 followed by a new Italian book,
Italy's
Private Gardens; An Inside View in October 2010,
both with Frances Lincoln. It is drawn from
conversations with gardeners, garden owners and
landscape architects in private gardens all over Italy,
and is illustrated with Alex Ramsay's vivid and
engaging photographs. 
Helena
contributes articles about architecture, interiors and
gardens – of course – to numerous magazines,
including Country
Life,
The
Saturday Telegraph Magazine and
The
World of Interiors.
She
is a
fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and is writer in
residence at the University of Worcester. She lectures both
at home and abroad on a broad spectrum of subjects within
garden history. She is a visiting lecturer on the garden
history MA course at Birkbeck. She lectures regularly to a
number of professional and non-professional groups, has
appeared twice at the Hay Literary Festival, and also at
the Oxford and Rye literary festivals. She works
with Boxwood Tours to design and
lead lecture tours to gardens in Italy, Portugal and
Britain. Together with David Wheeler of
Hortus she started the
highly successful Hortus Tours. Helena lives on the
Welsh borders with her partner Alex Ramsay, whose
photographs illustrate many of her books and
articles.