Her admirers included Beck, Billy Corgan, Nick Cave and PJ Harvey, although her history would always be closely tied to the Rolling Stones and to the years she dated Mick Jagger, epitomising 'Swinging London'.

Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull was born in Hampstead on 29 December 1946. Her mother was Baroness Eva Sacher-Masoch, a Hungarian, half-Jewish former ballet dancer who had fled the Nazis in World War II.

Marianne Faithfull, the songstress who helped spur music's British invasion and was a muse to the Rolling Stones, died Thursday at 78.