The author of a bestselling memoir who is being sued for libel by her mother admits that she made mistakes in her book but is not a malicious fantasist, a court heard today.

Constance Briscoe, a part-time judge, is being challenged over allegations she made in her autobiography, Ugly, that she suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, and her stepfather.

Andrew Caldecott QC, acting for Miss Briscoe, 50, said in his opening remarks that his client stood by the substance of her allegations even if minor details were incorrect. “If this is from pillar to post a work of fiction, it is an extraordinarily wicked thing to do, or a mad thing to do,” he said. “We say this is a book which has its errors, but it was properly put in the biography section of the bookshop, not in the fiction section.”

He said that Miss Briscoe admitted that she got dates wrong, but could not forget the horror of the abuse that she suffered. “We remember events themselves… but what we don’t really remember are the dates of those events… We are not, thank God, machines.”

He added that the detailed conversations in the book were not intended to be word-for-word recollections of actual events. “Nobody in their right mind would think that Constance Briscoe has a tape recorder in her head. The conversations plainly could not be verbatim.”

Mr Caldecott asked the jury to consider the character of his client: “Is Constance Briscoe a fantasist or a malicious inventor, or has she done her best to recall her childhood?”

He said that the case was summed up by two words, cruelty and neglect. He also encouraged the jury to consider the vulnerability of the witnesses. “When you see the witnesses in the witness box it would be quite natural for you to assume that Mrs Briscoe is the more vulnerable of the two because she is elderly,” he said. He asked jurors to remember that during the events described, Mrs Briscoe would have been in a position of authority relative to her daughter.

He drew the jury’s attention to an assessment written by a social worker about Miss Briscoe’s half-sister, Norma Eastman, that referred to the methods used by their mother. Miss Eastman told the social worker that her mother used “physical methods to discipline her and her siblings” and that “some of the chastisements were severe”. The letter also stated: “[Miss Eastman’s] mother would use implements to discipline them.”

William Panton, acting for Mrs Briscoe, said that his client had strived to do her best for her 11 children. “What the claimant will say is that she struggled to bring up 11 children, a good part of the time without help from the fathers,” he said. “You will also hear that her abuse of Constance Briscoe is a nonsense.”

The case continues.

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