Helen Brook

Helen Brook, CBE (born Helen Grace Mary Knewstub; 12 October 1907 – 3 October 1997) was a British family planning adviser who in 1964 founded the Brook Advisory Centres with the primary aim of reducing the number of illegal abortions and "to inculcate a sense of sexual responsibility in the young". She was appointed CBE in 1995. On 14 December 2016, she was named as one of seven women chosen by BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour for their 2016 Power List of women deemed to have had the greatest influence on women's lives over the past 70 years.

Biography Born Helen Grace Knewstub in Chelsea, London, in 1907, one of six children, she was educated at the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus at Mark Cross, Sussex. At the age of 17, she married George Whitaker, leader of the Chenil Chamber Orchestra, giving birth to a daughter the following year; the marriage was dissolved at her request after two years and she then spent two years in Paris as a painter. Having returned to London, in 1937 she married banker Robin Brook and they had two daughters.

John Stokes described the letter in Parliament as "notorious" and "a terrifying doctrine, the end of which one dare not see."

Brook was vice-president of the national council of the FPA from 1987. In later life, she lost her sight, and she died as the result of a stroke on 3 October 1997, survived by her husband. She was named on the BBC Radio Four Woman's Hour 2016 Power List that celebrated the seven women who have had the biggest impact on women's lives over the past seven decades (the others being Margaret Thatcher, Germaine Greer, Jayaben Desai, Barbara Castle, Bridget Jones and Beyoncé).