Celebrity Stats

British Novelist Dame Beryl Bainbridge died at the age of 75 on Friday after battling cancer, her literary agent said.

Liverpool-born Bainbridge, nominated for the Man Booker prize on five occasions and two-time winner of the Whitbread award for fiction, died at a London hospital in the early hours.

Her publicist Susan de Soissons of Little Brown & Company said: "she was one of the huge doyennes of literature and everyone adored her."

Her bestsellers include "An Awfully Big Adventure," "Master Georgie" and the "Dressmaker."

"Every Man for Himself," set on the sinking Titanic, shot her into the media spotlight when it became swept up in the publicity surrounding the hit Hollywood film.

In 2008, she featured in a Times newspaper list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. She was made a dame in 2000.

(Reporting by Stefano Ambrogi; Editing by Steve Addison)

-www.afp.com