A life of funny, serious, perplexing paradox

FAY WELDON has often found herself in situations not of her own choosing.

She was to have been born in New Zealand but emerged from the womb in England. She is one of the finest novelists of the last 40 years but she began her literary life as an advertising copywriter in order to earn enough to raise her child alone. Desperately seeking solace in marital bliss, it took her three husbands to achieve it.

For years a trenchant critic of religion, in 2000 she chose to be baptised into the Church of England because, as she put it, “it allows you to believe one thing one week and another the next”.