[3] Born Helen Grace Knewstub in Chelsea, London, in 1907, one of six children, she was educated at the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus at Mark Cross, Sussex.

As Ann Furedi wrote in The Independent, "Brook was motivated by fervent belief that children should be born to mothers who wanted them and could care for them.

When, at the end of that year, a storm of publicity broke, the Marie Stopes board suggested it would be expedient if she founded a separate centre.

The opportunity was duly seized and the first of the Brook Advisory Centres exclusively for young, unmarried people opened its doors in London to women and men in 1964.

"[1]On 16 February 1980, Brook wrote a letter to The Times in which she stated: "[T]here are countless men and women, parents, who are too selfish, too ignorant, too lazy to be bothered about their children's general education.