Gaynor Evans meets Bristol author Eleanor Berry, a woman whose relationship with disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell and sedentary, nocturnal lifestyle in Clifton makes for fascinating reading as any fiction she may write.
It is difficult to know what to make of Eleanor Berry, the Bristol-based writer of 17 acclaimed novels. She is the number one fan of disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell, sends her friend Reggie Kray a bunch of birthday flowers every year on October 24 and is a Russian-speaking former Communist party member.
Shortly before meeting her at Clifton's Avon Gorge Hotel, I checked out her rather eccentric website on which she confessed to having "a penchant for unwashed men who are slightly overweight, provided they wear their ties loosened at the neck."
A rebel, she has a fondness for whiskey and is a committed night owl.
I was accordingly quite surprised when she shuffled into the hotel almost on time, in a cloud of Menthol Consulate smoke and wearing her trademark leopard print scarf.
Her uniform of gothic black is offset by a crop of honey blonde hair and there is an air of fragility behind the kohl-rimmed eyes. Her eyes are startling; the irises are so dark they virtually merge with the pupils.
But it is her rasping, staccato voice that commands attention. It has, by her own account, been compared to that of an elderly transsexual. For me, it was Marge Simpson's elder sister's Patsy and Thelma brought to life.
Berry has the air of someone who has lived her life at the pace of a libidinous hotel-trashing pop star, and a long battle with her personal demons has taken a visible toll on her health.
She won't reveal her age but official estimates put her at around 45.
She orders a tea and sinks four sugars into the cup, then lights up the first of many fags after asking me if I mind.
"You have a very tolerant personality," she thanks me.
Berry enjoyed a priviliged upbringing as the daughter of Lord Hartwell, former proprieter of the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, to whom she is still very close. Of Welsh ancestry, she was born and brought up in London..
In her teens she suffered from schizophrenia, and later, valium addiction, neither of which, she says openly, she suffers from today. Her 17th novel, 'The Rendon Boy to the Grave is Gone', has just been launched to critical acclaim yet it is her habit of defending famously unpopular men that has ensured she hit the headlines in the past.
Berry met Robert Maxwell at his 43rd birthday party when she was an impressionable schoolgirl of 16 about to start her A-levels. She developed not so much a schoolgirl crush on him but a passionate obsession that has lasted to this day.
When she was thrown out of her university lodgings by her landlady, Maxwell took her in and allowed her to live with his family at his sumptuous Headington Hill home for a year. He later visited her when she spent a spell in a mental institution and their friendship endured until his mysterious death whilst sailing his yacht in 1991.
So did this 'friendship' blossom into a full-blown affair?
She immediately smirks, lowers her eyes, and says playfully:
"Ah, that would be telling..."
Her burning desire for the man she describes as 'a hulk of a man, who looked like a beautiful black labrador and generated vivid, brutal and overpowering sexuality' spilled over into her memoir of him, entitled 'Robert Maxwell, As I Knew Him'.
It is fair to say her hero-worship of the man who posthumously became Public Enemy Number One over the fiasco of the missing millions from the pension funds, has not won her many friends. But you have to admire her courage in defending such a social pariah.
In a state of grief after his death which she beieves was an accident, she tricked her way into the offices of Private Eye editor Ian Hislop and demanded he apologise to the Maxwell family for criticising the dead newspaper magnate.
Whether the family, particulary his widow, Betty, appreciated such devoted loyalty is doubtful.
And what are her views on the Mirror pension fraud?
"I don't see him as having stolen the money but borrowing it with the intention of paying it back later. I don't think Maxwell was a dishonest man. Towards the end he was so ill he didn't know what he was doing. He was very sensitive and vulnerable behind a blustery exterior."
How, I wonder, would she react if she bumped into one of the many pensioners left penniless by his antics?
"I think I would pass a slightly incongruous remark about the weather and then walk on."
The bluntness of her views does no justice to her personality which is warm and despite her cushioned background, desperately vulnerable.
Asked whether she misses Maxwell, she replies: "I don't miss him because I feel he is around me all the time and my flat is covered with photos of him."
Her first edition of her latest book was changed 12 times because she found her main character, Rosen, turning into Maxwell. It was onlt when Reggie Kray, who read her manuscript in prison and sent her a note effectively to 'snap out of it' that she was able to get a grip on the novel.
"With respect, and very great respect because I know you are a lady," he wrote "all you do is just bang on and on about that bleeding bloke."
His words hit a chord with Berry who conceded the character was starting to control her.
"I had to lung-cancer him out", she said darkly.
She has no kids - "my books are my children" - and has never married, spending long weekends holed up in her small Clifton house where she writes until dawn.
"I think the Bristol people are friendlier than those in London," she told me. "Clifton is a lovely community and has a nice atmosphere. I'm particularly struck by Clifton Suspension Bridge."
When she is not working, she spends two days a week counselling depressives for the charity Suicides Anonymous. Berry admits she leads a sedentary lifestyle and quips: "When I see a jogger on the pavement, I always think that person must be awfully neurotic."
Alarmingly superstitious, she regularly consults the best friend of Reggie Kray's late mother, a clairvoyant named Fay Campbell who also helps Berry decipher the letters she receives from Kray, whose dyslexia makes writing difficult.
Our interview comes to a sudden halt. The photo shoot has exhausted Eleanor Berry who excuses herself graciously and reaches up to give me and the photographer a childlike farewell kiss on the cheek. Her last word?
"I think you could say I've had quite a colourful life."
