LONDON - Dame Barbara Cartland, whose own life epitomised the lost age of romance she wrote about in her 723 books, died peacefully in her sleep yesterday. She was two months away from her 99th birthday.
Dame Barbara, whose step-granddaughter was the late Diana, Princess of Wales, died at her home in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, surrounded by her family.
"She had a wonderful life," said her son Ian McCorquodale.
"I think that she will be remembered as a writer of wonderful romance books that brought so much joy to so many people."
She will also be remembered as a larger than life character, likely to appear swathed in her favourite pink chiffon with a Pekingese under her arm. She espoused a world in which girls did not allow a man to kiss them until he had proposed (true in her own case) and in which class and breeding were evident.
Asked once by a BBC interviewer whether class barriers had broken down, she replied: "I wouldn't be sitting here talking to someone like you if they hadn't."
She was even credited with partly inspiring John Major's back to basics campaign, having spoken to him shortly before its launch about the need to get back to romance.
But fascination with Dame Barbara's eccentricities masked her right to a place in British literary history. While her novels gained little esteem with the critics, they did make her the world's most prolific-ever author, with estimated worldwide sales of one billion copies in 36 languages. For many years she wrote one new book every two weeks.
She wrote her first book at the age of 21 and only the onset of illness in October forced her to reduce her workload.
Lord St John of Fawsley, Dame Barbara's friend of 40 years, said last night that the writer "was an extraordinarily intelligent woman. She was extremely kind and generous. I think she added to the gaiety of the nation and she will be sadly missed."
Dame Barbara thrived on a cocktail of vitamins, something which she had advocated since 1948 when vitamin therapy and alternative medicines were thought unusual. Among her considerable charity work, she also campaigned for gypsies to be allowed permanent sites so their children could be educated. Hertfordshire's first gypsy camp was dubbed "Barbaraville." Her wide-ranging interests also included organising a motor race for ladies at Brooklands in Surrey in 1931. The line-up included the American socialite Wallis Simpson. In the same year Dame Barbara also pioneered the idea of an aeroplane-towed glider to deliver the mail.
She was also a Conservative councillor for Hertfordshire.
Her father, Major Bertram Cartland of the Worcestershire Regiment, died in the First World War and both her brothers were killed at Dunkirk.
After a stream of proposals from romantic lovers, she married Alexander McCorquodale whom she divorced in 1933. Three years later she married his cousin Hugh.
In 1991 she effectively wrote her epitaph in a published letter entitled "How I Want To Be Remembered."
She wished to be remembered for her novels which she hoped would give "beauty and love to the world."
- INDEPENDENT
Grand Dame of a lost age
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