Inside the home of Annabelle Gregory, every surface is a story — a watercolour on fabric here, a collage portrait there; vegetables and fruit bowls immortalised in acrylic line the kitchen walls. Her work is eclectic and evolving, never settling on a single style or media, but the house is alive with colour, energy and the traces of a life that has never stood still.

At 84, Annabelle has worn many hats — model, mother, restaurateur, antique dealer — but she’s always been an artist. “You have to move the whole time,” she says. That instinct for motion, for reinvention, is what her new memoir The Art of Becoming seems to capture.

Published this autumn by Winter & Drew, the book is a glittering journey through a life lived in full technicolour — from post-war London to the rolling green of Devon.

Annabelle and her husband Barry ran the beloved Bistro 35 in Modbury for more than two decades, turning it into a community hub. “I would remember what people looked like after they’d gone and draw them,” she says, gesturing to the works that now fill her studio — collage portraits, watercolours on fabric, still lifes of kitchen fruit bowls, even raw, naïve sketches of customers and friends. “There’s beauty everywhere,” she adds. “I’ve always seen it — and I’ve always had to draw it.”

Even through the busiest and hardest years, painting was her solace. “I’ve survived,” she says simply. “And I’m lucky to be a survivor. My studio is my escape.”

That sense of survival has shaped her life since childhood. Though her parents were creative, they never nurtured her artistic gift. “They didn’t encourage it at all. I was a free spirit really… I did things when I wanted to and how I wanted to.” That independence became her trademark — enrolling at art school against her mother’s wishes and marrying Barry at nineteen.

Her life took on varying cinematic turns: modelling, working with film directors, tragedy, and living amid Soho’s notorious glamour and grit when the couple ran a popular nightclub. The memoir features tantalising mentions of run-ins with the Kray twins, police raids, and nights among artists in 1960s London. “It was very exciting,” she recalls. “We had all the local TV and film people in there, but it was also full of people doing sleazy deals — what we’d call gentlemen criminals.”

After her husband died, the silence of an empty house pressed in. “I went up to the attic and found all these pictures and photos,” she recalls. “I thought, I can’t just be sitting here on my own not doing anything. I’ve got to do something with all this.”

What began as a way to fill the silence became The Art of Becoming, a deeply personal project Annabelle describes as both therapy and legacy. “It’s unearthed a lot of things I’d forgotten about,” she says, “but it was all connected with my art.”

The memoir is also a tribute to her daughter, Sacha, who suffered a brain tumour. “She was my best friend,” Annabelle says softly. “We did everything together. She always encouraged me.”

In her memory, all profits from the book — launching on 14 November at the Brownston Gallery in Modbury — will be donated to the Brain Tumour Trust.