A poet who spent most of her life in Palmers Green has been honoured by English Heritage.

Poet laureate Andrew Motion unveiled the blue plaque last Friday at the former home of Stevie Smith, in Avondale Road, where she lived for 65 years.

Born Florence Margaret Smith, in Hull, 1902, Stevie moved to N13 when she was three-years-old. She later studied at the North London Collegiate School in nearby Edgware.

She worked as a secretary with the magazine publisher George Newnes, before embarking on her writing career in her 20s, publishing her first novel in 1936.

Death was a recurrent theme in her personal and innovative body of work after her mother died when Stevie was a young child.

Her popular poetry, which includes Not Waving But Drowning (1957) was officially recognised with the Queen's Gold Metal for Poetry in 1969.

A spokeswoman for English Heritage said: "As one of the most accessible of modern poets, Stevie Smith's deeply personal work has endured and remains popular to this day.

"On her death, the Times lauded her talent as wholly individual, unconventional and unpredictable'."

Smith fell ill with a brain tumour shortly after winning the Queen's Gold Medal and she died in 1971 while visiting her sister in Devon.