Helen Rankin was born in
Boxmoor,
Hertfordshire, the daughter of Thomas Rankin, a Scottish doctor, and Kathleen McClelland. She was educated at
Queenswood School. After
Girton College, Cambridge, where she graduated in 1945 in economics and literature, she did postgraduate training in
adult education at
Oxford University, where she was supervised by
Thomas Lionel Hodgkin. After a job as an editor at the Bureau of Current Affairs in London, she married the academic
David Kimble. He was appointed director of extramural studies at the
University College of the Gold Coast, and the couple left for
Ghana in 1949. ==Works==