AS Byatt: a life defined by literature

The Booker prizewinning novelist, who has died aged 87, was intelligent, curious – and warmly supportive of younger writers

It was always a joy to receive an email from the Booker prizewinning novelist AS Byatt. It might range from Nietzsche to newts to the weather in northern France (where she had a house) to the splitting migraine she’d had since Tuesday and why some writer was completely misguided about something or other. But no, she was dreadfully sorry, but she couldn’t write anything because she was deep in a novel of her own. And PS have I read the new novel from [insert name of as yet unheard-of novelist], it is really terrifically good.

READ MORE BY CLICKING ON THE SOURCE