Dame Barbara Cartland was buried yesterday in a private funeral service for family and close friends. The romantic novelist, who died on Sunday, aged 98, was laid to rest in a cardboard coffin in the grounds of Camfield Place, her mansion home near Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

Around 150 relatives and friends gathered in the house, which was once owned by Beatrix Potter, before following Dame Barbara's coffin in silence to a 400-year-old oak tree which was planted by Queen Elizabeth I.

As mourners stood under the great oak, Dame Barbara's grandson, William, read one of her poems about love and the afterlife.

Her daughter Raine, who married Earl Spencer, father of Diana, Princess of Wales, read a passage from the First Letter of John. The service was led by the Rev John Cotton, former vicar of St Mary's in the nearby village of Essendon. Mourners then joined in singing the Perry Como ballad I Believe.

Like the other mourners, Judy and David Almond, neighbours of Dame Barbara who knew her for 23 years, took a leaf from the oak tree to remind them of the occasion.

One of those at the service was Lord Brocket, to whom Dame Barbara wrote while he was in prison for insurance fraud.
Press Association