Beryl Bainbridge, 1934-2010

Beryl Bainbridge at home in Camden Town in 1998
Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images

Bainbridge's 1989 novel, An Awfully Big Adventure, was drawn from her own early life when she worked for a repertory theatre company. Here, she is performing on stage with Mable Constanduros in King of the Castle
Photograph: Continuum Books

Bainbridge appeared briefly on Coronation Street, playing the part of Ginnie, a student colleague of Ken Barlow, in 1961
Photograph: ITV/Rex Features

Bainbridge eventually abandoned her acting career to write. He first published novel, A Weekend with Claud, came out in 1967; here she is at home, surrounded by her collection of stuffed animals and statues, in 1974 - the year she won the Guardian Fiction Prize for The Bottle Factory Outing
Photograph: Hulton/Getty

Bainbridge with her statue of Neville Chamberlain. The statue had an earlier incarnation as Adolf Hitler, during the time she was writing Young Adolf - a fictionalised biography of the 23-year-old Hitler, over in the UK to visit his relatives in Liverpool
Photograph: Michael Ward/Rex Features

Bainbridge was made a Dame in recognition of her service to literature in 2000. She was presented with the honour by Queen at Buckingham Palace on November 21 2000 - her birthday
Photograph: Michael Stephens/PA

Bainbridge, with the dog end of a cigarette, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2001. Bainbridge was an unapologetic smoker for many years, and stopped writing for a while after she gave up, aged 71. "I can write journalism, but it takes days," she said at the time. "It would only take a few hours with a fag in my mouth."
Photograph: Murdo Macleod/Guardian

Bainbridge at home with one of her paintings, in 2001
Photograph: Adrian Dennis/Rex Features

Bainbridge at home in 2007, following the airing a documentary by her grandson, Charlie Russell, called "Beryl's Last Year", filmed in 2005 following her 71st birthday. Beryl believed (incorrectly, as it turned out) that she was destined to die aged 71, like her father and mother before her
Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Guardian

Bainbridge's desk, with the typewriter on which she wrote he first drafts. The dog - named Walter - was given to her by one of my grandsons, who won him as a school prize. "He doesn't distract me," she said. "I've got a full-size buffalo in the hall and I don't notice him."
Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/Guardian

Beryl Bainbridge cuts a birthday cake to celebrate what would have been Samuel Johnson's 300th birthday, on September 18, 2009. Her 2001 novel, According to Queeney, told the story of the last two decades of Johnson's life, through the eyes of his mistress's daughter
Photograph: Martin Argles/Guardian