Acclaimed novelist Margaret Forster has died, her widower Hunter Davies has announced.

The award-winning author, who wrote many successful books including Georgy Girl and Diary Of An Ordinary Woman, died on Monday morning at the Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead, north London.

She was 77 and had been suffering from cancer in her back.

Hunter, also a writer and journalist, said: “She had a double mastectomy 40 years so she’s had a remarkable life considering she had it for so long.”

Born in Carlisle, Margaret was a teacher at a girls’ school in Islington, north London, before her writing career took off.

Her big break came with Georgy Girl, the story of a young woman in 1960s London who is romantically pursued by her father’s older employer and the young lover of her promiscuous and pregnant flatmate.

The book was turned into a successful film starring Lynn Redgrave as Georgy, Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates and James Mason. It also featured a song of the same name by The Seekers.

Speaking to the Press Association about his wife, Hunter said: “She was the cleverest woman I ever met.”

He said she won a scholarship to go to Oxford, adding: “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.

Lynn Redgrave, right, with her sister Vanessa Redgrave, at an Oscars after-party after being nominated for her role in Georgy Girl
Lynn Redgrave, right, with her sister Vanessa Redgrave, at an Oscars after-party after being nominated for her role in Georgy Girl (AP)

“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.”

He said his wife wrote in and around 27 novels and never wanted to be interviewed.

“In fact, she had an agreement with her publisher not to do literary lunches or do any broadcasting, and she actually didn’t care whether the books were published or not.

“Her fun was in writing them and if the publisher didn’t want to publish it, so what? She’d move on to the next one,” he said.

Hunter added: “She was a remarkable woman in every way.”

Margaret had spent around a month in hospice care before passing away.

In a Sunday Times article published on February 7, Hunter 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.”

In 2014, Hunter reported that his wife was distinctly unimpressed when he was awarded an OBE for “services to literature”.

He said: “I told my wife and she said ‘You’re not going to accept it’… She said that if it had been a knighthood she would have divorced me.”

Hunter Davies accepted his OBE - though wife Margaret Forster was unimpressed
Hunter Davies accepted his OBE – though wife Margaret Forster was unimpressed (John Stillwell/PA)

Margaret was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1975.

The literary organisation wrote on Twitter: “We are sad to hear the news of the death of writer and RSL Fellow Margaret Forster.”

Margaret was a prolific writer, with novels including Have The Men Had Enough? (1989), The Memory Box (1999), and Lady’s Maid (1990).

She was also an acclaimed non-fiction author, with her biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning winning the Heinemann Award in 1989 and her work Daphne Du Maurier: The Secret Life Of The Renowned Storyteller winning the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Non-Fiction in 1993.

In 2014 she wrote a memoir, My Life In Houses, which told the story of her life from a Carlisle council estate, via Oxford, to London’s Hampstead and her Lake District home.

It followed two previous memoirs, Hidden Lives (1995) and Precious Lives (1998), which focused on her family and their history.

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