[7] She had elocution lessons and, when she was 11, appeared on the Northern Children's Hour radio show, alongside Billie Whitelaw and Judith Chalmers.

She was expelled from Merchant Taylors' Girls' School in Great Crosby when she was caught with a "dirty rhyme" (as she later described it) written by someone else in her gymslip pocket.

The summer she left school, she fell in love with former German prisoner of war Harry Arno Franz who was waiting to be repatriated.

Bainbridge spent her early years working as an actress, and she appeared in one 1961 episode of the soap opera Coronation Street playing an anti-nuclear protester.

[7] Sharp, a Scotsman, was at the start of his career as novelist and screenwriter; Bainbridge would later let it be thought that he was her second husband; in truth, they never married but the relationship encouraged her on her way to fiction.

[8] Among her historical fiction novels are Every Man for Himself, about the 1912 Titanic disaster, for which Bainbridge won the 1996 Whitbread Awards prize for best novel, and Master Georgie, set during the Crimean War, for which she won the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

The introduction described her theatrical experience, from winning a talent competition to assistant stage manager in Liverpool to occasional acting roles.

In 2003, Bainbridge's grandson Charlie Russell began filming a documentary, Beryl's Last Year, about her life.

The documentary detailed her upbringing and her attempts to write a novel, Dear Brutus (which later became The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress).

The novel, which was based on a real-life journey Bainbridge made across America in 1968, is about the mystery girl reputed to have been involved in the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

[7] Following Bainbridge's death in 2010, the Man Booker Prize set up a "Best of Beryl" prize, the nominees being her books that had previously been shortlisted: The Dressmaker, The Bottle Factory Outing, An Awfully Big Adventure, Every Man for Himself, and Master Georgie; by a public vote, Master Georgie was chosen as the winner.

[21][22] Mark Knopfler included a song titled "Beryl" dedicated to her and her posthumous award on his 2015 album Tracker.