Helle Stangerup

Stangerup was born in Frederiksberg, Denmark on 30 October 1939. She was the daughter of the university professor and the actress (). Stangerup was the great-grandchild of the Swedish author Hjalmar Söderberg and her brother was the Danish writer . When she was at school, she was a childhood friend of the future Margrethe II of Denmark. Stangerup was sent to boarding school in Switzerland and the United Kingdom and graduated from N. Zahle's School in 1959. She went on to enrol at the University of Copenhagen, where she trained as a lawyer, and graduated as a Candidate of Law seven years later. ==Career==

A year after her graduation, Stangerup made her debut as a writer with the crime novel Gravskrift for Rødhætte in 1967. Her breakthrough publication was another crime novel called Gule handsker published in 1968 and set in Denmark. Stangerup went on to author the novels Spejldans in 1969, Diamanter er dydens laun in 1970, Solsikkerne in 1972, the psychological thriller Ulvetid in 1980 following a lengthy break from writing and Den tibetanske maske in 1981. and won the De Gyldne Laurbær that same year. In 1989, Stangerup published the novel about Leonora Christina Ulfeldt, She wrote the modern suspense thriller Stedfar in 1996. Stangerup published her memoirs, Bag skodderne, in 2011. Her works have been published in other languages such as Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Norwegian and Swedish. ==Personal life==

She was a Protestant. Stangerup was married to the landowner County Count Adam Vilhelm Josef Knuth af Knuthenborg from 25 July 1969 until their divorce in 1979. They had two children. She died from a long illness on 29 March 2015. ==References==