SHEFFIELD AUTHOR AND POET DAME AS BYATT HAS DIED AT THE AGE OF 87

Some sad news this afternoon – The Sheffield-born author, critic and poet Dame AS Byatt has died at the age of 87.

The writer, whose full name was Antonia Susan Byatt, was the winner of the Booker Prize for her 1990 novel Possession.

She was appointed a CBE in 1990 before becoming a dame in 1999. Dame Antonia wrote the Children’s Book in 2009, for which she received a nomination for the Booker Prize.

Her most recent book was Medusa’s Ankle: Selected Stories, a collection of short stories, in 2021.

Dame Antonia was born in Sheffield in 1936 and grew up in the South Yorkshire city and York before studying English at Cambridge University, in Philadelphia and at Oxford.