Trivia

She was awarded the Booker Prize for her novel, "Possession.".

She was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for her services to literature.

She was awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1999 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, and Oxford. She began teaching at University College London in 1962, and published her first novel, Shadows of a Sun, two years later.