Award-winner author Anita Brookner has died at the age of 87

Brookner, who wrote 25 books, won the Booker Prize in 1984 for her novel Hotel du Lac.

She was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish Jewish parents, who opened their home to refugees fleeing the Nazis before World War Two.

She started writing fiction in her 50s, having carved a successful career as art historian.

She was the first woman to hold the Slade professorship of fine art at Cambridge University. She was made a CBE in 1990.

She never married and had no children.

While her Jewish background was rarely referenced in her work, she confessed in an interview that she had "never learnt the custom of the country. We were Jews, tribal and alien ".

A notice of her death, which appeared in The Times, said she had passed away peacefully in her sleep on March 10.