Jennifer Worth: Call The Midwife author dies at 75

Worth also taught piano and singing for more than two decades

Best-selling author Jennifer Worth, who wrote the popular Call the Midwife trilogy, has died aged 75.

A spokesperson from publishers Weidenfeld & Nicolson said the company was "deeply saddened" to announce the writer's death after a short illness.

Worth's books were based on her own experiences of being a nurse in the east end of 1950s London.

Each book sold almost a million copies and spawned a new publishing sub-genre of nostalgic true life stories.

Worth's midwifery tales are currently being adapted for a BBC TV series with Cranford screenwriter Heidi Thomas working on the script.

Born in Clacton-on-Sea in 1935, she grew up in the Buckinghamshire town of Amersham.

Worth trained as a nurse at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading and worked as a midwife, ward sister and night sister from 1953 until 1973.

She left nursing to study music and gained the Licentiate of the London College of Music in 1974.

Her publishers said Worth passed away on 31 May and is survived by her husband Philip Worth, whom she married in 1963, their two daughters and three grandchildren.