Lambert was born Angela Maria Helps to an English civil servant and a German-born housewife. She was unhappy when sent to Wispers School, a girls' boarding school in Sussex, where by the age of 12 she had decided that she wanted to be a writer. She went to St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she read politics, philosophy and economics.

In 1962, she married Martin Lambert, they had a son and a daughter, and the union ended five years later, when he left her with two young children to support. Later she also had another daughter with the Hungarian-born writer Stephen Vizinczey.^[2]

She began her career as a journalist in 1969, working for ITN before joining The Independent newspaper in 1988.

Lambert suffered multiple immune disorders and hepatitis C (caught from a blood transfusion) which led to cirrhosis of the liver. Having survived a critical illness in February 2006, she never quite recovered, and became increasingly disabled. She lived in London and France (having bought a house in the Dordogne in 1972). She was survived by her partner of 21 years, television director Tony Price, and her three children.

Novels edit

• Love Among the Single Classes (1989)
• No Talking After Lights (1990)
• A Rather English Marriage (1992)
• The Constant Mistress (1994)
• Kiss and Kin (1997)
• Golden Lads and Girls (1999)
• The Property of Rain (2001)

Non-fiction edit

• Unquiet Souls: A Social History of the Illustrious, Irreverent, Intimate Group of British Aristocrats Known As "the Souls" (1987)
• 1939: The Last Season of Peace (1989)
• The Lost Life of Eva Braun (2006)

• Obituary