PICKTHORN, Dowager Lady (Helen Antonia nee MANN) (1927-2025)
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Helen Lady Pickthorn, champion of the fox-hunting comedy of RS Surtees and the paintings of her Glasgow grandfather
Before turning to Surtees, she had successfully put her grandfather, the Scottish painter Alexander Mann, on the map
Helen Lady Pickthorn, who has died aged 98, restored the artistic reputation of her grandfather, the post-impressionist painter Alexander Mann (1853-1908), and helped to revive interest in the works of Robert Smith Surtees, the Victorian comic writer of fox-hunting novels and creator of Mr Jorrocks, the Cockney grocer.
An income derived from Mann, Byars & Co, his family’s textiles business in Glasgow, enabled Alexander Mann to live in Paris and study painting under Carolus-Duran, and relieved him permanently of the need to make a living by the sale of his work. Consequently, when he died in 1908, a great proportion of his paintings passed to his widow, and in due course to Helen Pickthorn, his only grandchild [….]
Having successfully put her grandfather back on the map, Helen Pickthorn helped do the same for Surtees. The R S Surtees Society was set up by her husband, Sir Charles Pickthorn, Bt, in response to a tease by Michael Wharton (Peter Simple) in the pages of the Telegraph, with a view to republishing Surtees’s books, all long out of print. The idea had first been floated by Sir Charles’s father in the 1940s [….]
Helen Antonia Mann was born at home in George Street, London W1, on July 31 1927, the only child of James Mann and his wife Mary, née Cooke. James was then Assistant Keeper of the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square; he progressed to be Director of the Wallace Collection, Master of the Armouries at the Tower of London, Surveyor of the King’s (and later Queen’s) Works of Art, and a knight.
Helen’s mother was the daughter of a clergyman, the Reverend Professor G A Cooke, the Oxford theologian who became Regius Professor of Hebrew and a canon of Christ Church, and who implanted in his grand-daughter Helen, when she stayed with him and her grandmother in Oxford, a fascination with the lives of the saints that would eventually lead her to become, in middle age, a Roman Catholic [….]
After the war, with private coaching, Helen gained a place at Girton College, Cambridge, to read English, later switching to History. The Cambridge geologist and polar explorer James Wordie was her father’s cousin, and it was through him that she met Charles Pickthorn at a May ball.
Charles was a son of the retired president of Corpus Christi College, Kenneth Pickthorn, Conservative MP for Cambridge University, who was made a baronet in 1959.
Following their marriage, in 1951, at the Tower of London (Helen’s father was now Master of the Armouries), while Charles exchanged practice at the Bar for Schroders, the merchant bank, Helen worked in education, initially teaching English to foreign students. She wrote two books in the field: Student Guide to Britain (1966), and Locked Up Daughters (1968), about the opening-up of education to girls.
For a time, she served as parliamentary liaison officer at the Council for Education in the Commonwealth, and she chaired the board of governors of More House School, the Catholic girls’ school, which, with support from Cardinal Heenan, she and her fellow governors saved from closure. Having acquired, in 1975, the house at Nunney, Downside Abbey became a focus of Helen Pickthorn’s church life.
Like her husband, Helen Pickthorn had a passion for Conservative politics. Foreign affairs provided another keen interest, and she was fascinated by the work of the Foreign Office. Sharp, funny, thoughtful, informed and well able to charm, she was an entertaining conversationalist who enjoyed a lively discussion and would defend her views unflinchingly in argument.
Helen Pickthorn is survived by a son and two daughters.
Helen Pickthorn, born July 31 1927, died August 1 2025