The Man Who Was Helen Cathcart Helen Cathcart was a prolific writer about the Royal Family, who enjoyed enormous success with her books in the 1960s and 1970s. These emerged with regularity, sold well and were largely enjoyed (if not always at Buckingham Palace). One mystery surrounded the author - she was never seen. Occasionally journalists visited her agent, Harold Albert at his cottage near Liphook, and suspected that Helen Cathcart did not exist. Invariably they left less convinced. Only when Harold Albert died was it revealed - in an obituary written by Hugo Vickers - that Harold Albert and Helen Cathcart were one of the same. In this illustrated lecture, Hugo Vickers explains that the story of Harold Albert himself was considerably more interesting than anything that Helen Cathcart herself wrote. He had a grim early life, his father deserting his mother when he was a child, he was entirely self-educated and became in time a prolific and successful journalist, personally interviewing both Hitler and Mussolini before the war. He wrote a successful novel, Café People. In the war he was imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs as a conscientious objector and then he created Helen Cathcart. In his later life he ghosted the biography of Prince Philip written by Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia and he wrote the books. The story of Helen and Harold makes for a thought-provoking talk.