In a 2007 interview for a Guardian series on writers' rooms, Beryl Bainbridge (1932-2010) described the objects - including her grandson's toy gun - on her writing desk. "I got the typewriter in 1958...You can't get them mended anymore so I have to be very careful with it. I do first drafts on it. It gives you more time, because it is so old you have to thump it, where a computer just races." Her typewriter was an Imperial "Good Companion" (also used by Enid Blyton).