A Putney artist who nearly died during childbirth is giving thanks to her liver donor that saved her life as part of a new book of launched by the Royal Free Hospital.

Helen Eccles, 48, of Howards Lane, features in the book called Thank You For Life, which contains 50 letters from Royal Free transplant patients to donors and their families thanking them for their transplant organs and their new lease of life.

She suffered from acute liver failure while giving birth to her daughter, Ella, in 1996, and received a much needed life-saving liver transplant two days later at the Hampstead hospital.

Mrs Eccles said: “Giving me a mismatched liver was a risk but I would have died that day without it. It was all very dramatic but I was determined to live and my liver is still functioning to this day.

“I’m very grateful to the transplant doctors and nurses at the Royal Free who were fantastic.”

She spoke at the launch of the book on November 9, which took place at The Royal College of Physicians, which also featured Professor Andrew Burroughs, a consultant physician and hepatologist at the Royal Free, who came up with the idea with the book with Linda Selves, senior liver co-ordinator at the hospital.

She added: “When you receive a transplant, you can never thank the donor and their families enough. I hope the book helps to show how grateful we all are and also sends out a positive message about organ donation.”

Mrs Eccles’ painting, Gift of Life, forms the book’s cover and is her abstract version of Duccio’s scenes in the Maesta, which hangs in the National Gallery and intends to give the painting to the Royal Free Hospital.