Helen Batten

Biographer Helen Batten recounts the riotous life of a forgotten star of the Victorian stage, Emily Soldene.

Soldene was an actor-manager born to a humble working-class family who rose to become a celebrated leading lady, director and formidable impresario, and created one of the Victorian era’s most famous opera companies. Batten explains how Soldene tore up the rulebook for a Victorian woman, how she mingled with the likes of Charles Dickens and the Rothschilds, and how her global travels led to both triumphs and calamitous disasters.

Batten is a former BBC producer and director and author of the bestselling Sisters of the East End, which looked at the real lives of the sisters who inspired the BBC’s Call the Midwife. She is also co-author of Gerry Cottle’s biography, Confessions of a Showman: My Life in the Circus.