Katharine Lawley spoke to Fay Weldon about her life and career before the best-selling writer's In Conversation appearance at Mere Literary Festival

STYLE gurus would have you believe that a woman can be defined by her handbag.

But novelist Fay Weldon begs to differ.

In a survey on the subject published last month, she says her only remaining bag - after "an amazing orange one was stolen" - is not like her at all.

"A psychoanalyst told me that your handbag represents your mother, and I think mine does, because mine is small and neat, unlike me," she says.

She has become used to bucking trends.

The current panic over pensions and the gloomy prediction that millions of Britons may have to work on until they are 70 do not concern her in the slightest.

The author of 26 novels, her autobiography (Auto da Fay), seven short story collections, plays, articles and children's books, has already passed that milestone, but shows no inclination to retire or even slow down.

Mantrapped - part-novel, part-autobiography - has just been published, her next novel is under way, the BBC version of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil is out now on DVD and future projects include the screenplay of an opera.

Fay is enjoying the attention Mantrapped has attracted and is delighted at the release of the DVD.

"Auto da Fay was straight autobiography, but Mantrapped is a blend of autobiography and fiction - I wanted to mix the forms," she explains.

"Once you have done autobiography, you begin to see yourself as rather interesting!

"In Mantrapped, I am in a novel writing it - it's very different, but I have always ploughed my own furrow.

"My mother was a writer and she, my grandfather and my uncle all earned their living from it - it must be in the genes.

"I ended up doing it, but it's not what I started out to do."

Fay spent her early years in New Zealand and came to England aged 15.

She read psychology and economics at the University of St Andrews and began her career in advertising copywriting, TV commercials and TV plays.

It was not until her 30s that she began to "write the books I wanted to read".

She became a pioneer of the battle of the sexes theme and, because the subject matter was controversial, she was always assured of readers.

"At the time, books about women were romantic and I wanted to write books about women that had some relation to reality," says the mother of four sons.

"I was writing feminist books before feminism.

"But I had no idea how to write a novel - how to get people into and out of rooms."

Her best known book, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, was huge and the many successes that followed meant she could have rested on her laurels long ago.

But that is not her style.

Her next novel will explore what happens when a woman takes another woman into her home to look after her baby.

"You must feel guilty, but you have to live with it by acknowledging that guilt and getting on with it," she says.

She is also writing the screenplay for an opera adapted from French novelist Raymond Radiguet's Le Diable au Corps, a story of adolescent passion and cruelty, and she has just addressed a conference for philosophy professors about the animal and human kingdoms in literature.

There may be no let up in her professional life, but she is grateful that she and husband Nick are now happily settled in Dorset.

"Living in London, you meet only literary people and I prefer a wider spectrum," she says.