An author from Belsize Park who took up writing later in life has launched her third novel at the age of 77.

Barbara Bisco released her latest tome, Tiger with a Human Soul, at Foyles bookshop in Charing Cross Road last Tuesday.

The Belsize Crescent resident published her first book at 70 and jokes that it simply took her “a long time to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up”.

She hopes that Tiger with a Human Soul, a century-hopping tale of an archaeologist on the Indonesian island Java, should appeal to women aged 18 to 65 – and added that her books are “definitely not granny novels”.

All three of Ms Bisco’s titles are set in South East Asia, where she and her husband, economist Roger Montgomery, lived for many years from the 1970s.

Speaking about her writing career, she said: “It’s very exciting – I love doing it.

“People say it must take a lot of discipline, but it doesn’t need any at all. My favourite thing to do is writing.”