You never know what’s behind a London door, especially when visiting the house of a woman who doesn’t exist. I’d been searching for a missing novelist, and the trail led to Spitalfields, in London’s oldest surviving quarter.

Behind the door was what I first took to be a farm; a cobbled courtyard with a gilt hen-house, dogs, cats and sundry shrieking birds. Here, on Midsummer’s Eve, a concert was to be held, with a zodiac theme. Beyond stood a studio filled with sculptures and a barn with a chandelier that on closer inspection proved to be made of jam-jars, bicycle wheels and kitchen utensils. As the guests gathered — a tall, poker-thin lady who might be a modern Edith Sitwell, another dressed entirely in parrot feathers, a florid gentleman whose latest collection of ribald poetry, Sodomy is Not Enough, is being tipped as a coming cult — I considered their hostess’s remarkable career.

In 1969 a young author called Maryann Forrest wrote a novel that shocked the critics. The book was championed by Anthony Burgess, who found it “a keen literary pleasure”. Unusually, there were no biographical details on its cover. Here (Away from It All) is the adult equivalent of Lord of the Flies. On a Greek island overrun with package tours an unspecified event ends all contact with the outside world. Suddenly foreign currency is rendered worthless. Holidaymakers find themselves paying bills with watches and necklaces, and civility strains to breaking point. The tale drops to a truly horrific climax.

When I tried to trace its creator I drew a blank. How could someone described by Time Out as “so superb and alive a talent” simply disappear? One publisher suggested that she had moved to the Greek island of her novel, but I’d discovered that she had written two more books. On the back cover of one, Forrest — blonde and attractive, but reticent and unsmiling — had been photographed glancing away from the camera in a pose that recalled Alice in Wonderland.

After weeks of searching, I received a letter that began: “I know what happened to Maryann Forrest — for I am she”. Forrest was an alias adopted to write the novel by Polly Hope, who was living in Greece during the military junta and would have faced deportation upon publication of Here. She had covered her tracks so successfully that her books became impossible to find, but she never lost the urge to write.

Hope was born into an aristocratic family. Her father, General Sir Hugh Stockwell, had commanded the Anglo-French forces during the Suez crisis. His daughter trained as a dancer, grew too tall, and decamped to art school.

Moving to Rhodes, Hope married and bore a son. Running the family involved dealing with an endless parade of friends and relatives, so she elicited a few hours’ work a day from everyone, beginning with a task list left out at breakfast. “My husband and I lived by the week,” she explained. With a partner who felt that no gentleman should work, Hope started writing because she needed the money. Here garnered raves, and led to her second novel, Us Lot, which captures the thrill of being young, directionless and alive to the world’s possibilities. It’s a sexually precocious work, remarkably clear-eyed about the motives of men on the make.

She continued to a claustrophobic and mysterious third novel, The Immaculate Misconception, inspired by her own family, illustrating it herself, then switching to a bewildering array of media, including ceramics, murals, tapestries, fountains, photography, jewellery, portraits, embroidery, bronzes, operas, even ecclesiastical vestments. She’s as happy knocking up a wedding dress as she is designing a statue in Hyde Park.

Hope has since become something of a global phenomenon. Her designs for the German production of Kiss Me, Kate last year are vibrant and gloriously decorative. Her creations range from something the height of a building to objects that can be placed in a matchbox. At the Barbican in East London Hope created a 1,400 sq m mural, writing a clause into the contract warning that they could not stick posters over it. When this happened, she took the matter to court and the mural was eventually painted out. She says they can always uncover it again.

It’s rare to find someone working in so many different artistic spheres. “I’m a Gemini,” she explains, “so everything came in pairs; two husbands, two countries, two careers.” Her second husband was Theo Crosby. “Whenever we signed into American hotels as Crosby and Hope, the desk clerks fell about laughing.”

She was introduced to her largest project by her husband, the architect of the Globe Theatre. The task was to occupy the next 25 years and was completed after hours as charity work. Her designs ranged from statuary to stonework, from backdrops to busts. “I just make things,” she says, “I’m a jobbing artist. But nothing has ever come easily. It’s as hard now as it always was.” Hope even has an unfinished historical novel waiting in her desk.

She feels her best work always lies ahead. “After all, Verdi produced one of his great operas, Falstaff, at 80,” she reminds me, lighting a cigarette. And then the door is shut, and the chaos of Brick Lane closes about me once more.

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