It is always interesting to learn where writers draw the inspiration for their characters and plots from – their own experiences, scraps of conversations overheard, stories on the news, and sometimes from other writers.

Friern Barnet author Irene Panter based the protagonist of her novel, The Contessa’s Last Dance, on none other than the late Dame Barbara Cartland, after having tea with her.

“Ten years ago, somebody wanted a writer to ghost-write a biography of a Finchley businessman,“ explains Irene, who is in her 80s. “He’d been the director of a building firm in Mayfair and knew all these society people, Mountbatten and all those, and I met Dame Barbara through him and she invited me for tea. I was in touch with her quite a lot while I was writing that book.

“We were having tea and she was telling me all these things that were very serious – war and death, life, the evolution of society – it wasn’t like the romantic fiction you’d expect from her. And afterwards she said to me, Write it, write it, and so I based the Contessa on her.“

The Contessa’s Last Dance tells the story of Julie MacFarlane, who goes to stay in the country house of the ageing Contessa when she begins a history of art course at university as a mature student after the breakdown of her relationship. The novel also features a dashing American academic and a princess, the Contessa’s companion who lives in a crumbling castle (really a hunting lodge) in Austria. It explores the sense of loss the Contessa’s generation feels as the ‘electronic age takes over fair play, aspiration and good manners’.

“She represents the older generation that has seen England slip away into the computer age,“ says Irene. “It’s not going to stop, is it, but I think it’s terribly difficult for a lot of older people. The book is really a lament for England, Robert Browning’s ‘Oh to be in England’ sort of thing. That’s what Dame Barbara was in mourning for, she was a traditionalist.“

For the novel, Irene also drew on the history of art degree that she studied for at Birkbeck University in Bloomsbury under Nikolaus Pevsner, a course which Julie enrols on in the novel.

“Pevsner had just come down from Cambridge,“ Irene remembers. “He was a real Germanic taskmaster! We all went with him to Lincoln Cathedral in the snow and he made us climb up on to the ramparts to look at the architecture. And he didn’t believe in eating lunch, he said it made you tired, so you could go the whole day without eating anything.“

Irene first had a novel published 50 years ago by Hodder and Stoughton, called Must I Remember, but decided to concentrate on a career in personnel management and teaching instead. But, now she has The Contessa’s Last Dance under her belt, she already has an idea for another fictional outing.

“I think I could write a fictional account of my grandmother who lived in New End in Hampstead,“ muses Irene. “She had a very traumatic life, having been foolish enough to fall in love with Lord Mansfield of Kenwood House’s boot boy, even though she was married to his gardener.“

Dame Barbara would have been proud.