Dusty Springfield died yesterday in Oxfordshire at the age of 59 after a five-year battle with breast cancer. Born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, on April 16th, 1939, in Hampstead, north London, she was brought up in Buckinghamshire. Convent-educated and shy, she began her singing career with The Lana Sisters in the 1950s. In 1964, she shot to solo fame with I Only Want To Be With You, the first record to be played on Top Of The Pops. Throughout the mid-1960s, she was rarely out of the charts and her blonde beehive hairstyle and heavy eye make-up were imitated by teenage girls. Her fellow pop stars from the 1960s, such as Lulu, Cher, Sandy Shaw, Elton John and Cilla Black, paid tribute to her yesterday, as did Queen Elizabeth, who said she was "saddened to hear of her death so soon after she was awarded an OBE in the New Year's Honours list".

The Pet Shop Boys, with whom she made a comeback in the late 1980s, said they were proud to have worked with Britain's "greatest female singer".