LONDON – Tributes from the literary world have poured in for British novelist Dame Beryl Bainbridge, who died yesterday morning at the age of 77.
The author, whose acclaimed works included An Awfully Big Adventureand Master Georgie, died at a London hospital at about 2am after a short illness.
Sir Michael Holroyd, Dame Beryl’s biographer, said she should be remembered as one of the greats of British literature. “She’s up there with the best,” he said.
He said that, although she did not win the Man Booker Prize despite being shortlisted five times, she did win the David Cohen Prize. This, he said, puts her alongside literary heavyweights like Séamus Heaney, Harold Pinter and VS Naipaul, who also won Nobel prizes for literature.
Liverpool-born Dame Beryl had been working on a new book, The Girl In The Polka-Dot Dress, her first since the publication of According To Queeneyin 2001. The new novel focused on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.
Dame Beryl was regarded as a master storyteller and her historical novels had made her one of the best-known figures in postwar British literature. She often drew on her own experiences during her early literary career, with books such as The Dressmakerand debut A Weekend With Claudefeaturing fictionalised episodes from her own life.
Sir Michael remembered how her personality had a great effect on her writing: “She was very entertaining and there were a lot of jokes when you got to know her, but there was a poignancy and sadness.”
The writer, who lived in Camden, north London, had long been convinced that she would die at 71 – the age, or thereabouts, at which her parents and grandparents died.
Her own age became a matter of confusion when she struggled to remember whether she was born in 1932 or 1934, after fibbing about her birth date to enable her to take a trip to France as a youngster without her parents’ knowledge.
Dame Beryl said she was unafraid of dying. In one interview she said: “Death has never worried me. I wouldn’t like to go quickly of a heart attack or something.
“I’d like a proper goodbye, with lots of words and things said.” – (PA)