Beryl Bainbridge gets writing again

Beryl Bainbridge gets writing again Beryl Bainbridge, the endearingly eccentric novelist, has revealed a new method of curing writer’s block – have a heart attack. For some time she had found it extremely difficult to get anything down on paper, a state of affairs she had ascribed to her coming off Hormone Replacement therapy drugs. She wrote in yesterday's Sunday Times: "I have a theory that creativity is sexual in origin, which is why men, owing to testosterone, go on being productive longer than women. Women, on the other hand, start to lose their oestrogen once they reach the menopause.

She added: "I couldn't think properly. My thoughts wouldn't come together in any meaningful way. I no longer wanted to talk. I didn't clean the house. I rarely went out. I was deeply depressed. Sometimes, I thought: well, do I really need to go on living?"

This desperate situation, however, was rectified when she suffered a heart attack nine weeks ago while attending a concert in London. Since then work on her new book, which she describes as "a sort of poor man's version of On the Road and Lolita”, has improved. Indeed, it appears to have given her a completely new lease of life. "The block has lifted. The novel is still a long way from being finished and most of the pages I've done in the past week or so are no good, but it's a start. I've become so energetic that I keep cleaning the house. I've tidied my workroom, I've moved furniture, thrown out clothes, repotted the geraniums."