Beryl Bainbridge was ‘always on side of the underdog’
Figures from arts world and neighbours who loved her pay tribute to award-winning author
Published: 15 July, 2010
by DAN CARRIER
FROM friends at the corner shop where she bought her daily paper to senior members of the literary scene, the funeral of Camden Town writer Dame Beryl Bainbridge saw mourners from all walks of life say their personal goodbyes.
More than 250 people filled St Silas’s church in Prince of Wales Road on Monday afternoon – and heard the vicar Father Graeme Rowland speak of Beryl’s love for the building, where she would regularly attend. Incense filled the air as he told the mourners gathered that he often thought of Beryl when he stood there.
Father Graeme explained that behind him was a plaster support decked out with angels, and went on to reveal its history. He said: “It used to be hanging upside down in her living room – some of the angels are missing wings because people had knocked them off as they walked past it, she told me. She insisted I have it.”
Beryl, who passed away last week after suffering from cancer, had lived for more than 40 years in her terraced home in Albert Street and had become a fixture in the Camden community.
As well as neighbours and family friends, the mourners included Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams, BBC culture correspondent Mark Lawson, broadcaster Lord Bragg, the Church of England envoy Terry Waite, novelist Joseph Connelly, playwright Ron Harwood, broadcaster Sue McGregor and TV personality Henry Kelly.
Melvyn Bragg told the New Journal: “She was simply a lovely person and quite extraordinary. She had a voice – northern, Liverpool, Anglo-Catholic – which she never lost.”
They pair met 35 years ago on a writers’ trip to Israel.
He added: “She was a complicated person, a different person to everyone who knew her, yet always one of the nicest you could ever possibly meet.”
Author AN Wilson said: “I had met Beryl in the 1970s but we became closer friends when I moved into Arlington Road – my flat adjoined her garden.”
He praised her style, adding: “She had perfect pitch – every sentence she could hear before she wrote it down.
“She had an overwhelming interest in others. We would have breakfast at the Good Fare café in Parkway, and while we would talk about writing, she would also have a gossip.”
Father Graeme spoke of how Beryl had worked in a bottle factory to help make ends meet before she was published – and later turned her experiences into a best-selling novel, The Bottle Factory Outing.
He also spoke of her joy in the company of friends and family – and especially children. And he revealed how this gave her comfort in her final days.
And while she had a reputation for her sharp-witted comic writing and her love of parties, Father Graeme spoke of her insistence on doing things “properly”.
He added: “She was conservative in some ways – dressing properly, speaking properly. She even called for the return of elocution lessons to schools once on the radio.
“She was proud to be a Dame and meet the Queen, but at the same time was always on the side of the underdog.”
After the service, Beryl was buried at Highgate Cemetery, where mourners sung the 1902 song about war, Two Little Boys, by American writers Theodore Morse and Edward Madden.