Being constantly with children was like wearing a pair of shoes that were expensive and too small. She couldn't bear to throw them out, but they gave her blisters.

The summer Beryl Bainbridge left school Beryl Bainbridge fell in love with a former German POW who was waiting to be repatriated. In the late 1970s Beryl Bainbridge wrote a screenplay based on her novel Sweet William.

Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996; Beryl Bainbridge was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Bainbridge among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction often set among the English working classes.