Judge's 'Ugly' memoir is fiction, says mother

A mother who is suing over claims of cruelty and neglect made in memoirs written by her daughter, who is a barrister and part-time judge, told the High Court yesterday that her children were her "pride and joy".

Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, repeatedly broke down and said her "heart was breaking" as she gave evidence in her libel claim against her daughter Constance Briscoe, 51, who wrote in her autobiography that when she was a child her mother had neglected her, beaten her and called her a "swine".

The part-time judge maintains her 2006 memoir Ugly is factually accurate, while her mother – who is also suing the publishers Hodder & Stoughton for libel – says it is nothing but fiction.

Ms Briscoe's QC, Andrew Caldecott, told the jury that the book recounted experiences which had taken place years earlier and might contain minor mistakes in the timing of events. But he added that the important thing was to decide whether his client was a "fantasist or a malicious inventor" or had "done her best to tell the truth of what was a very unhappy childhood".

He said: "If this is from pillar to post a work of fiction, it is an extraordinarily wicked thing to do, or a mad thing to do. We say this is a book which has its errors, but it was properly put in the biography section of the bookshop, not in the fiction section."

In the book, Ms Briscoe claimed that her mother would regularly kick her, punch her and beat her with a stick, but admitted that she did not report the alleged abuse to police or social services.

She also claimed that her mother ridiculed the way she looked, branding her "ugly" and even refusing to buy photographs of her which were taken by her school.

Her mother's counsel William Panton agued that his client had worked as a dressmaker to provide for her many children without the help of a steady father figure. He dismissed the book's claims as "nonsense", and accused Ms Briscoe of "spinning a yarn".

Mrs Briscoe-Mitchell, who has 11 children of whom Ms Briscoe is the third, told the court that her daughter was a "beautiful baby" but "didn't like her colour". She added that her family was "very happy" and that she had never had any problems with her children.

"The boys, they could be a little bit mischievous, but my girls they were excellent. My children were my pride and joy," she said.

Ms Briscoe, one of the UK's first black female judges, went on to write a second book entitled Beyond Ugly.

The case continues.