I wondered whether the Audrey Coppard that recorded the 1956 album for Folkways was the same person who wrote educational books for children and 'juveniles' in the 70's, who was Bernard Crick’s secretary when he was professor of politics at Birkbeck, and who became Company Secretary and copy editor for Political Quarterly, from which she retired in 2005 while living in Lewes in East Sussex.

This is from the sleeve notes of the 1956 album:

Mrs. Coppard is twenty-three; five years ago she first became interested in folk music when she "discovered Appalachian Mountain songs via jazz and the blues. The collecting of folk material then became a passionate hobby, but feeling how relevent to a nation's culture its folk music is, I now concentrate on my native songs and ballads. "
Audrey's father, mother, grandparents and relations are all classical musicians. Although she is not a professional singer, she had sung in clubs in London and given a number of concerts. These last were organized by A.L.Lloyd and Ewan MacColl, to whom she is indebted for introducing her to several of the songs in this collection. She is accompanied by Lesley Davison, guitar, an American girl living in London, who has, herself, a large repertoire of folk songs from both America and Europe.
The songs in this album are from widely scattered counties in England, and differ in age and content. The titles include a carol (Bitter Withy), a love song (Died of Love), a children's game song (Johnny Todd), two riddle songs (Scarborough Fair and I Will Give My Love an Apple), and three ballads (Polly Vaughan, The Trees Are Getting High, The Nightingale ). Recorded also are London 'street cries. '

The book "Nancy of Nottingham" was written in 1973, one of a series of educational books for children from Heinemann. It was reviewed in History Workshop Vol 2 (Autumn, 1976):
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288078
This is the part of the review (I can't see it all without a subscription).

... Nancy of Nottingham not only told me about the Luddites but also awakened my interest in them. By making the central character a girl coming up from the country who herself hadn't heard of the Luddites, Audrey Coppard provides a way of telling the reader about them as well as making the book even more interesting to the audience it is aimed at, i.e. children. It is set in the times of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, when countless numbers of people had their land taken by rich landowners and were forced either to work for their lords on land which had previously been their own or their friends', or to move into the growing towns and cities. Nancy, the main character, is one of these. When her mother dies having her fifth child, Nancy and her younger brother Will are sent to Nottingham to live with their uncle and aunt. Her elder brother and sister stay in the small village to look after the baby and their father, whom the squire refuses to employ. When they arrive in Nottingham everything seems very strange and crowded to them, as they are used to the quiet of a country village.
Their uncle, a frameowner and supporter of the Luddites' aims, gives them work to do. They soon learn from their uncle and his son John about the problems facing stockingers in Nottingham, about the 'cut-outs', stockings made by cutting shapes out of large pieces of material and stitching them together. These, although cheaper, fell apart more more easily than the old stockings. The cut-outs, they learnt, were stealing the trade from the old stockingers. Their uncle believes in peaceful means, like sending petitions and delegations to parliament, but John seems more sympathetic towards the Luddites; eventually, Nancy finds him writing out a Luddite song and discovers that in fact he is one. After this he takes her into his trust and she helps him to get ...

It seems to me not unlikely that the singer who associated with Ewan MacColl, who sung industrial ballads, would write about the Luddites - and introduce a song into the plot.

I watched the first part of the BBC Arena Orwell programme from 1984 on YouTube. It covered his schooldays, his time in Burma, and up to writing Down and Out. A good old-style documentary.