‘Dondie’ blazed a trail for romantic fiction

Rosamunde Pilcher’s novels, often set in cosy, middle-class homes, revolved around strong women coping with difficulties in life including ageing parents, badlybehaved children, ill husbands and various domestic upheavals.

Her work sold particularly well in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and German state television adapted them into a series of more than 100 films, shown on Sunday evenings over 18 years.

On visits to Berlin, she would find herself being hugged in the street.

Despite the money she earned through her work, Mrs Pilcher remained sceptical of wealth and, in particular, what it could do to the balance of a relationship where the husband was accustomed to being the main breadwinner.

“You have to be very gentle when that changes”, she was quoted as saying.

In interviews, she was often witty and observant about human quirks and was sceptical of the pleasures of the afterlife, once saying: “I can’t see it as anything other than the most hideous cocktail party.

“All you’d see would be the people you didn’t want to see, and all the ones you wanted to see you wouldn’t be able to find.”

Her son, author Robin Pilcher, said: “She had been in great form up until Christmas, then suffered from bronchitis in the new year, but was always expected to bounce back as before.

“However, she suffered a stroke on Sunday night and never regained consciousness.”

He added: “When my eldest son was young, my wife would always drop in on my mother on her way to Dundee.

“He thought that when she said ‘going to Dundee’, it meant seeing his grandmother, so he called her Dondie.

“She was called that by grandchildren, great-grandchildren and all their friends. She was Universal Dondie.”

Bestselling novelist Katie Fforde, who is president of the Romantic Novelists Association, said: “Rosamunde Pilcher was groundbreaking as she was the first to bring family sagas to the wider public.

“With The Shell Seekers, she changed the face of romantic fiction.”