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| Anita Brookner, Booker Prize-winning author, dies age 87, Times announces | Anita Brookner, Booker Prize-winning author, dies age 87, Times announces |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Anita Brookner, the Booker prize-winning British author and renowned art historian, has died at the age of 87, according to a notice in the Times. | Anita Brookner, the Booker prize-winning British author and renowned art historian, has died at the age of 87, according to a notice in the Times. |
| Brookner, who won the Booker in 1984 for her novel Hotel du Lac, was a bestselling author who wrote 25 books. | Brookner, who won the Booker in 1984 for her novel Hotel du Lac, was a bestselling author who wrote 25 books. |
| According to the Times notice, she died peacefully in her sleep on 10 March. | According to the Times notice, she died peacefully in her sleep on 10 March. |
| Fellow novelist Jilly Cooper told the paper she was a "wonderful writer" who was "an icon [of] my age". | Fellow novelist Jilly Cooper told the paper she was a "wonderful writer" who was "an icon [of] my age". |
| Critical acclaim | Critical acclaim |
| London-born Brookner, who was made CBE in 1990, began writing in her 50s after a distinguished career as an art historian. | |
| She was the first woman to hold the prestigious Slade professorship of fine art at Cambridge University, and taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art. | She was the first woman to hold the prestigious Slade professorship of fine art at Cambridge University, and taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art. |
| Her first novel, A Start in Life, was published in 1981 and she went on to win critical acclaim. Her most recent work, the novella At The Hairdresser's, was published in 2011. | |
| However, according to The Times, she was a private character who declined most interviews and invitations to book signings or talks. | |
| Cooper, who paid tribute to her "wonderful lucid prose", said: "I used to watch her at parties and everybody else was getting legless while she was just observing everybody. She never stopped watching and observing." | |
| Born in 1928, Brookner was the only child of Polish Jewish parents who opened their London home to refugees escaping persecution by the Nazis during World War Two. | |
| As a young woman she spent three years studying in Paris as a postgraduate, and reportedly said she had "never been so happy". | |
| She often spoke of how her family's roots made her feel like an outsider in the UK, once saying in an interview that she had "never learnt the custom of the country... we were aliens... tribal". | |
| She never married or had children - and, according to the Telegraph, said in 2009 "That's why I write. Because I have no children." |