Goodbye, my Georgy Girl: author of sixties classic was cleverest woman I ever met, says her husband after her death from cancer at the age of 77

Beloved: Novelist Margaret Forster, pictured with her husband Hunter Davies, has died aged 77

The award-winning writer Margaret Forster, author of the 1960s classic Georgy Girl, died yesterday at the age of 77.

Her husband, the writer Hunter Davies, led the literary world’s tributes to the woman who had been his wife for 55 years.

Miss Forster, who died at the Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead, north London, had been suffering from cancer, 40 years after she had a double mastectomy.

‘She was a remarkable woman in every way,’ said Mr Davies, 80.

‘She was the cleverest woman I ever met. She was emotionally clever, in that she could always understand people and predict their actions and their feelings and motives. She was just the most marvellous woman.’

Miss Forster, a former Booker Prize judge and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, won awards for her novels and non-fiction works, which included biographies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Daphne du Maurier, and the memoirs Hidden Lives and Precious Lives.

But it was for Georgy Girl that she was best known. The 1965 novel, about a free-spirited young woman who adopts her flatmate’s baby while torn between relationships with the child’s father and her own father’s employer, was turned into an Oscar-nominated film, starring Lynn Redgrave, Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates and James Mason.

In a moving article in this week’s Sunday Times, Mr Davies, the Beatles’ biographer, spoke of his struggle to cope with domestic life during Miss Forster’s final illness.

‘Yes, I know it is pathetic,’ he wrote. ‘During our 55 years of married life, I have contributed eff all to our domestic life – neither cooking nor cleaning, washing nor wiping. My wife, who has generally gone through life fitter, stronger and healthier than me, has gone into a hospice for respite care. So for the past four weeks I have been on my own, feeling dazed and disoriented.’

Mr Davies said his wife had not cared about money or fame but had written for the ‘fun’ of writing and had rarely agreed to do publicity work. She was unimpressed by his 2014 OBE for services to literature, he said, adding: ‘She said that if it had been a knighthood she would have divorced me.’

Born in Carlisle in 1938, Miss Forster, the daughter of a mechanic, won a scholarship to study history at Somerville College, Oxford. Her contemporaries at Oxford included the playwright Dennis Potter, who later wrote professing his love for her, which she dismissed, saying: ‘I wrote back and told him he was talking rubbish.’

Treasured: The author, whose best-known works include Georgy Girl and Diary Of An Ordinary Woman, passed away this morning at a hospice near her north London home 

She had already met her future husband while they were teenagers in their home town of Carlisle and they married in 1960.

After graduating, she taught at Barnsbury Girls’ School in Islington, North London, before publishing her debut novel, Dame’s Delight, in 1964.

She and Mr Davies, who had three children and four grandchildren, divided their time between London and Cumbria – Miss Forster described the Lake District as ‘balm for my soul’.

Her latest novel, How To Measure A Cow, is due to be released next month.

The broadcaster Lord Bragg, a friend of Miss Forster, told Radio 4: ‘She loved writing, she said sometimes that she loved writing too much. There was a sparkle about her. She cut to the core of things. She was an extraordinary woman.’

Family: The couple, who both had success as writers, pictured at home in 1968 with their son. Forster's most famous title was Georgy Girl, the story of a young woman in 1960s London who is romantically pursued by her father's older boss and the young lover of her pregnant flatmate

The Royal Society of Literature said: ‘Margaret Forster was an extraordinarily prolific and gifted writer of fiction, non-fiction and literary criticism.’

Paying tribute to her today Mr Davies, who is also a high-profile writer, described her extraordinary intelligence and added: 'But actually she was clever in a much better and nicer way. 

'She was emotionally clever, in that she could always understand people and predict their actions and their feelings and their motives, which I can never do. And she was a brilliant critic as well.

'Always had an opinion whether asked for it or not, and she was just the most marvellous woman. She was not interested in money. She was not interested in publicity.'

Forster wrote dozens of books, including novels, biographies, historical works and three memoirs, becoming a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1975.

Her final novel, How To Measure A Cow, will be released on March 3.

Private: Forster disliked publicity despite her strongly held views and literary popularity

In a newspaper article published yesterday, Mr Davies wrote: 'My wife, who has generally gone through life fitter, stronger and healthier than me, has gone into a hospice for respite care.

'So for the past four weeks I have been on my own, feeling dazed and disoriented.'

Mr Davies wrote the authorised biography of the Beatles and is also an acclaimed football writer who has ghost-written the autobiographies of sportsmen including Paul Gascoigne and Wayne Rooney. 

Forster shunned interviews and often refused to promote her own books, but held strong views which she expressed in private - she once said she would divorce

The Royal Society of Literature said today: 'Margaret Forster was an extraordinarily prolific and gifted writer of fiction, non-fiction and literary criticism.

'Her fellow Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature pay tribute to her work, and offer their condolences to her family.'

The Man Booker Prize added: 'Sad to hear the news that 1980 Booker Prize judge and award-winning author Margaret Forster has died.'