Frederick Ashton retirement in 1963, in the company known successively as the Vic-Wells Ballet, the Sadler's Wells Ballet and the Royal Ballet. He succeeded de Valois as director of the company, serving until his own retirement in 1970. Ashton is widely credited with the creation of a specifically English genre of ballet. Among his best-known works are "Façade" (1931), "Symphonic Variations" (1946), "Cinderella" (1948), "La fille mal gardée" (1960), "Monotones" I and II (1965), "Enigma Variations" (1968) and the feature film ballet "The Tales of Beatrix Potter" (1970). Ashton was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fourth of the five children of George
Helen Ashton Helen Ashton Helen Rosaline Ashton (18 October 1891 – 27 June 1958) was an Australian novelist, literary biographer and physician. Born in Kensington, London, Helen Ashton was the daughter of Emma Burnie and Arthur Jacob Ashton, KC, Recorder of Manchester. Her brother was Sir Leigh Ashton, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. She wrote her first novel in 1913, "Pierrot In Town". During World War I, she nursed as a VAD, and over the course of the war she wrote three novels. After the war, Ashton studied medicine, qualifying from the London Hospital in 1921 and graduating MB, BS