Miss Helen Foxcroft is best remembered for her biography of Sir George Savile, the first marquis of Halifax, published in two volumes in 1898. It established the canon of Halifax’s works and has not yet been superseded as a biography. Its importance was immediately recognised and it influenced subsequent writing on the period. In 1947 she revised and abridged the work and published it as The Character of a Trimmer. Characteristically, she had kept her writing a secret from family and friends. It was not her only published work, although few appeared under her own name.
A militant Conservative, although one acutely alive to political and social trends, she studied the development of Soviet Communism and conceived an immense dislike for it, amounting almost to hatred. Much of her writing was devoted to pamphlets and articles attacking it. They were powerful tracts, not unmarked by wit.
Although a scholar, she was not in any way a blue stocking. She acted as her brother’s secretary until his early decease in 1929 and her services as a magistrate and parish councillor were greatly valued. She also contributed to local history, publishing Monmouth and Philips Norton in 1911.
Magnificently absent-minded and capable of immense concentration, she was reputed to have fallen heavily while on on a long walk and got up without any remark other than to continue without pause the arguments about Neville Chamberlain upon which she was fully embarked.
She enjoyed living and the company of others and was loved as much as she was respected in her native village of Hinton Charterhouse.