The Xenophobe's Guide to the Danes (Xenophobe's Guides)

Helen Dyrbye (née Pearce) grew up on the east coast of England and learnt to sail on the Norfolk Broads. A career as PR assistant for the Scout Association was interrupted by marriage to a Dane and relocation to Denmark.

After two years of glottal stopping and starting, she began running courses for business professionals. A published author of children¿s fiction, she also works as a language consultant and makes dreadful packed lunches. She and her husband dream of finding a tax loophole big enough to buy a boat and teach their two sons to sail.

Steven Harris was working for a multinational in Brussels when he was moved to Copenhagen for 12 months¿ ¿rotational¿ training. He went on rotating in Denmark for ten years.

He knew he had mastered Danish when people stopped telling him how well he spoke it.

He now lives in England with his Danish wife and three children, and works from home as an intellectual odd-job man - translating Danish into English and doing market consultancy kinds of things in the legal and publishing worlds.

Thomas Golzen was born and brought up in London. He went to Denmark to work as a professional musician for three months in 1987, and never left.

After much travelling and a bewildering array of emergency jobs he settled in Copenhagen, where he still lives with his Danish partner and their two children. A graduate from the National Danish Film School, he is a freelance screenwriter. He also enjoys earning an extra bob or two by twanging his guitar, and helping to run emergency shelters for the Danish Red Cross.