13 Facts About Margaret Fairchild

Margaret Fairchild's life was depicted in the 2015 film The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett in which she was played by Dame Maggie Smith.

Margaret Fairchild was born in 1911 in Hellingly in East Sussex, the daughter of Harriett and George Bryant Fairchild, a surveyor and sanitary inspector.

In 1939, Fairchild was a Religious Sister and schoolteacher at St Gilda's Catholic School in Yeovil, Somerset.

Margaret Fairchild's brother related that in the convent Fairchild was forced to abandon her love of music and playing in order to concentrate on her faith and she left the order following a breakdown.

Margaret Fairchild's brother had her committed to Banstead Hospital, a psychiatric hospital, from which she escaped.

Margaret Fairchild was to abscond from various other mental hospitals until she remained at large for a year and a day which legally demonstrated her competence to live unsupervised.

Margaret Fairchild believed she was to blame for the accident and left the scene without giving her details, thereafter living in fear of arrest.

Margaret Fairchild never smiled, she had no sense of humour, her politics were very different from mine.

Margaret Fairchild was to stay until her death 15 years later.

Bennett ran an electric cable from his house to the van so that Margaret Fairchild could run a heater and a television.

Margaret Fairchild was only to discover her true identity from her brother after her death.

The 'genteel vagrant' Margaret Fairchild died in her van on the driveway at 23 Gloucester Crescent in Camden in 1989 aged 78.

Margaret Fairchild adapted the story again for the 2015 film The Lady in the Van, with Maggie Smith again reprising her role, and Nicholas Hytner again directing.