Writer Dame Beryl Bainbridge loses her battle with cancer

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.

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 Queeney in 2001. The new novel centring on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

Sir Michael said she was working on the book right up to the time her cancer took hold.

"She told me she had got to page 35 in her latest novel. She had got all her characters into a taxi, but didn't know how to get them out."

The author, a smoker for much of her life, had previously been treated for cancer in 2006. She was often pictured smoking. "She had cancer and she knew she couldn't smoke, but, for her, smoking was a part of the process of writing," Sir Michael added. "She said she was 'just going outside', but we all knew what she was up to."

Dame Beryl was regarded as a master storyteller. She often drew on her own experiences during her early literary career, with books such as The Dressmaker and debut A Weekend With Claude featuring fictionalised episodes from her own life.

She was educated at Liverpool's Merchant Taylors' School until expelled at 14, later attending a theatrical school where she studied tap dancing, drama and ballet.

Having written precociously as a child, her early career, was spent performing in a repertory theatres and even a role in Coronation Street. She moved to London towards the end of the 1950s. In 1958, heartbroken by a failed relationship, she attempted suicide.

But she conceded in later interviews she would not have written her 18 novels had she been in a lasting relationship. "I think that if you are with someone, and this is especially true of women, then you can't

write. You don't want to. It was only when I was on my own that I started to write.

"I think if things had stayed right I don't think I would have written.It was to fill in the gaps."

Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said: "For over 40 years, she has been rightly recognised as one of the world's greats, with an original voice and tremendous spirit."