LONDON: Booker Prize-winning British author and art historian Anita Brookner has died. She was 87.

A death notice published on March 15 edition of The Times newspaper said Brookner died peacefully in her sleep on March 10.

Brookner began her career as an art historian and wrote on that subject before turning to fiction, publishing her first novel in her 50s.

Her spare, unflinching portrayals of loneliness and isolation in her works won praise, especially from other writers.

Novelist Jilly Cooper told The Times that Brookner was "a wonderful writer who had this wonderful lucid prose... she was an icon of my age".

Brookner wrote some 25 books and won the Booker Prize in 1984 for her novel Hotel Du Lac.

The death notice said Brookner had requested there be no funeral.