A PACKED church yesterday said goodbye to Liverpool-born novelist Dame Beryl Bainbridge – a “superb granny” who had a “way with words”.

Dame Beryl, whose acclaimed works included An Awfully Big Adventure and Master Georgie, died at the age of 77 at the beginning of this month after a short battle with cancer.

Writer AN Wilson, broadcasters Sue McGregor, Henry Kelly and Melvyn Bragg, as well as former hostage Terry Waite and playwright Ronald Harwood were among hundreds of mourners at the funeral near her home in North London’s Kentish Town.

Formby-raised Dame Beryl was a former Merchant Taylors’ schoolgirl who was expelled for writing a poem which mentioned sex.

She started her working life as an actress in repertory at the Liverpool Playhouse, a world she immortalised in her novel-turned-film An Awfully Big Adventure.

Parish priest of St Silas the Martyr, Father Graeme Rowlands, told the mourners how Dame Beryl worked in a bottle factory before finding success as a writer.

The experience inspired her 1974 comedy The Bottle Factory Outing.

Dame Beryl, who has been ranked alongside literary heavyweights Harold Pinter and VS Naipaul, put much of herself into her characters and “had a way with words and a carefully tuned sense of what would work”, he said.

“To the last breath” what mattered to Dame Beryl, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker award five times, was “tolerance, patience and regard for others,” he added.

Father Rowlands said Beryl devoted herself to art.

He went on to praise her courage and determination.

“As a character, Beryl was very easy to love. There was no pretence in her dealings with others. She was always herself,” he said.