The Way I Was: 'Hereinafter called the Author': Charlotte Bingham tells Nicholas Roe how, aged 19, she had her first novel published

IT HAPPENED so quickly. One minute I was literally typing at the War Office, and the next I was posing for Life magazine. Now I can't believe what happened - even more so, in fact: when you're 19, you expect wonderful things to happen, don't you?

I was writing the book at night, hence these clothes, because they made me feel like a writer even though I knew I wasn't one yet. Black clothes were de rigueur. I would come home, go straight upstairs, change, then I'd write from eight o'clock until one or two in the morning, and at weekends.

I took a firm decision. I said, 'Right, from now on, no going out for six months: no boyfriends, no social life, nothing.' It was almost like entering a convent, sort of now or never. I had to have some sort of achievement before I was 20, you see, something recognisable to myself, anyway, because 20 seemed so awfully old. I panicked.

I used to play opera records all the time and I would just sit there, you know, until something came along. I used to work in my lunch-hour as well. I'd go down to the lower Ritz bar and they would give me orange juice and peanuts for two shillings and sixpence and I could be quiet for an hour. It was the first full-length book I'd written and I honestly didn't think I'd sell it, but I thought I might - you know that funny feeling you get? Half-way through, my father read it and said, 'Keep it up, you might make pounds 100.'

Then I was walking down Bond Street on a beautiful evening in early April and it was finished. I thought that this was one of the most wonderful nights of my life, nothing would ever beat it, I would remember every single thing about it. I would remember passing Asprey and the colour of the sky . . . I could see the Ritz ahead of me so I went down there and ordered a Scotch and I said to Laurie, the barman, 'This is a celebration because the novel's finished at last.'

And suddenly, by my shoulder, my father's agent appeared and said, 'Do let me read it.' I said no. I just felt it was too much: your father's agent, he'd just be kind. But finally he said, 'Look, I'm going away for the bank holiday weekend. If you leave it in my office I'll let you know what it's like.'

He rang me up later and said, 'I can sell this anywhere.' Then a few days after that he said, 'Oh, I've sold it.'

Selling your first book at 19 is obviously great but, on the other hand, when you live at home it can be a bit difficult. The book was taken up round the world and I was giving eight or 10 interviews a day. Our house was plagued with photographers and journalists from about 10 countries. My father didn't like the house being photographed because he worked for MI5, and in the end my mother put her foot down and said, 'No more photographers in the house.'

The poor fellow who took this photo (left) had to be smuggled in through the back door at six o'clock in the morning. We had to whisper and he was only allowed about a quarter of an hour and then I smuggled him out again. How did I feel? I thought it was such a wonderful thing to be sent a contract saying, 'hereinafter called the Author'. It seemed like something that happened in a book, let's put it that way. Since then, when my partner and I are arguing with producers about storylines, I get terribly annoyed when they say, 'Oh, but that's coincidence' about a turn of plot.

Because I understand, and the audience certainly understands, that surprising and extraordinary things constantly happen. I mean, if I'd gone into the Ritz bar and sat down and had a drink and said to the barman, 'I'm celebrating', and then gone home again, well, that's not a story.

(Photograph omitted)