I'm so relieved my children didn't follow me into crime

Convicted murderer and armed robber Linda Calvey, dubbed the Black Widow, served 18 years in jail for killing her lover Ronnie Cook. Now a bestselling author, and great-grandmother of eight, she reveals why family has always been her number one priority

- Karen Rockett

England's bravest bachelors please form an orderly queue. The so-called Black Widow is potentially in the market for a fourth husband... Linda Calvey was locked away for 18 years for murder and prior to that, three and a half years for armed robbery. A police officer nicknamed her the "Black Widow" after all her husbands and lovers seemed to end up either dead or behind bars.

Her third husband, businessman George Ceasar, whom she met in a pub on day release from prison, died of cancer in Spain in 2015 and Linda, now 77 and a great-grandmother, has remained single ever since.

As the inspiration for the leading character in Lynda La Plante's hit TV series Widows, it would take a certain kind of man to take her on, but she is undoubtedly still very attractive, looks at least a decade younger than she is, and is both warm and witty.

"I am not seeing anyone at the moment, but I would never say never to anything, and my children always say nothing I ever do would surprise them," she says.

Since being released from prison in 2009, Britain's most notorious female gangland boss has reinvented herself as a hugely successful author of both fiction and non-fiction bestsellers.

The second of three titles in Linda's gripping new gangland series set in London's East End, entitled Hope, is published this week. The trilogy follows three sisters as they navigate gritty and dangerous gangland life. Linda's fierce new female lead Hope works with her mother and sisters in a local brothel but finds herself in Holloway prison charged with a crime she did not commit.