Biography

Helen Thomas was educated by her father, F. W. Thomas (Professor of Sanskrit and Oriental Languages at Oxford), Roedean and Girton College, Cambridge, where she took a First in Classics and a starred First in archaeology. She then took up a studentship at the British School at Athens (BSA) 1935-1938 and excavated at Mycenae in 1939. During World War II she worked in the cipher officer at the British legation in Athens and then at the Political Intelligence Office in Cairo. In 1941 she returned to London to the War Office, then the Research Department at the Foreign Office, dealing with Greece and encrypting/decoding government communications. She was appointed Librarian of the BSA in 1946. Subsequently, she held a lectureship in Classics at Manchester University (1948-1949) and was honorary Lecturer and Research Fellow at Birmingham University (1966-1971) She married art historian Ellis Waterhouse (Kt 1975) in 1949 and they had two daughters.

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