Helen Forrester was the pen name of June Bhatia (née Huband) (6 June 1919 – 24 November 2011), who was an English author known for her books about her early childhood in Liverpool during the Great Depression, as well as several works of fiction.
Forrester was born in Hoylake, Cheshire (now in Merseyside), to an affluent middle-class family. When her father was made bankrupt during the Great Depression, the family was thrown into poverty and moved from a comfortable home in southern England to a slum area of Liverpool, where her father hoped to find work. As the eldest child, the 12-year-old June was kept away from school to look after her six younger brothers and sisters. Throughout her teenage years, she worked for a charitable organisation in Liverpool and Bootle, which provided background for her novels Liverpool Daisy, A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin, and Three Women of Liverpool. After surviving the Blitzing of Liverpool and losing a fiancé to the Second World War she met and, in 1950, married Dr. Avadh Bhatia; her life with him in India provided background for Thursday's Child and The Moneylenders of Shahpur. The couple travelled widely, eventually settling in Edmonton, Canada, in 1955, where Dr. Bhatia became the director of the Theoretical Physics Institute at the University of Alberta. He was a pioneer in electronic transport theory and the study of diffraction of light by ultrasonic waves.
The best-selling memoir of her childhood was Twopence to Cross the Mersey. It was later turned into a successful musical. Living in Alberta provided background for Forrester's novels The Latchkey Kid and The Lemon Tree. Yes Mama, which takes place mostly in late 19th- and early 20th-century Liverpool, also includes a section about Alberta. She died on 24 November 2011 in Edmonton, Alberta.
She was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Liverpool in 1988 and by the University of Alberta in 1993.