HAPPY BIRTHDAY

DAME A. S. BYATT, 81. The Yorkshire-born Booker Prize-winning author of Possession has spent a life-time feuding with her novelist sister Margaret Drabble. They fell out when Byatt discovered Drabble had been the first to write about a family tea set and now never read each other’s books.

MARLEE MATLIN, 52. The American star (right) is the only deaf person to have won an Academy Award for acting, scooping Best Actress for her first film role, in Children Of A Lesser God, in 1987, aged 21. On one 2011 episode of u.S. show The Celebrity Apprentice Matlin raised $986,000 for charity — a record for a single TV event. Host Donald Trump made it up to $1million.