Aye Write! interview: Jane Hawking, whose memoir inspired the film The Theory Of Everything

What the three Hawking children had to cope with, of course, was the fact that their father was extraordinary, in two very different ways.

By the mid-1960s it was evident that Stephen Hawking was one of the most promising physicists of the age. He had also been diagnosed with the motor neuron disease that his doctors and family expected would kill him within a couple of years.

We all now know that Hawking, still a professor at Cambridge, would outlive this hideous diagnosis by more than half a century - and counting - and go on to achieve a level of fame and acclaim matched only by Einstein.

But there was little comfort on offer for the young Jane and Stephen Hawking - aged 21 and 23 respectively - as they embarked on married life in 1965, not long after the initial diagnosis. The marriage ended publicly and acrimoniously after 30 years when the latter left the family home to move in with one of his nurses. That, of course, was not the end of the story.

Their remarkable life together recently came into the public eye thanks to the Oscar-winning film The Theory Of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, based on Jane Hawking's memoir, Travelling To Infinity, an expanded and rewritten version of an earlier book, Music To Move The Stars, published in 1999.

The film focuses on the couple's difficult but ultimately life-affirming battle to keep Stephen working despite the devastating onslaught of motor neuron disease, and the subsequent flourishing of his career as his theories about the origins of the universe and ability to popularise physics wowed the world.

Jane Hawking's book is a more full-bodied, nuanced and intimate affair, providing a frank account of the couple's increasingly difficult marriage, and the physical and emotional toll wrought by caring for a severely disabled loved-one - even one so accomplished - while bringing up young children. Candid in its descriptions of the challenges of such a life, full of emotional intensity and movingly written, it will doubtless ring true with families of disabled people everywhere.

Hawking, who still lives in Cambridge, describes the film as "absolutely beautiful", though she admits compromises had to be made.

"What was really strange was seeing myself and Stephen as we were all those years ago," she says. "That was heartbreaking. We were so young and innocent and very optimistic. It seemed so strange and powerful and painful.

"I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes from beginning to end. The acting is superb. Eddie's [Redmayne's] portrayal of Stephen is phenomenal and Felicity [Jones] plays me exactly as I am - the voice, gestures, movements. I thought I was seeing myself on the screen."

I suggest that one of the compromises the film made was that her character was not given the space or time to develop. Perhaps predictably, the movie concentrates on her ex-husband and his determination to push the boundaries of physics while his body gradually shut down. Jane Hawking, it has to be said, comes out of it all rather one-dimensionally, seeming only to inhabit the role of the uncomplaining middle-class wife who gives up her life to care for her brilliant husband.

"You are not the first one to have suggested that," she replies rather humbly, before hinting that in a direct parallel with her own situation, the actor who played her has also been somewhat eclipsed.

"Eddie [Redmayne] is the most kind, generous, unaffected person imaginable, and we should never detract from his success, particularly the wonderful Oscar and Bafta," she says. "But I feel very disappointed that Felicity hasn't won anything.

"Maybe that's the fate of people who live in the shadow of great scientists. Mrs Einstein and Mrs Darwin suffered in the same way."

In life, Jane Hawking, now 71, is warm, engaging and articulate. An accomplished linguist, she gained a PhD in Spanish medieval poetry while juggling caring for her then-husband with bringing up their children, Robert, Lucy and Tim, single-handedly. No mean feat.

The main reason for writing Travelling To Infinity, she says, was to give a "definitive" version of her life with Hawking, now one of the most recognisable people on the planet. It's a truly remarkable story and you get the impression she feared she may have been written out of it by others.

"I didn't want some cowboy coming in later to try and recreate our lives," she explains. "I had such a weight of memories on my shoulder, like a film going through my head. I wanted to discharge them and put them in a little box, rather than carrying them around with me all the time."

She looks back now, she says, and finds it hard to comprehend how she coped.

"We had no idea what was to come," she says. "And it's just as well, really. Stephen was initially given a diagnosis of two years to live. Of course, he has lived for more than 50 years [with the disease], which is a great tribute to his determination, genetic make-up, and the fact that they now know motor neuron disease comes in various forms and some people can live longer than they ever thought possible."

She adds: "I was very anxious that Stephen should have every opportunity to fulfil himself. In the early days of our marriage Stephen could walk around Cambridge on my arm - a stick on one hand, leaning on me with the other. I carried a baby on one arm and Stephen on the other. That's how we went to Seattle for a physics event in 1967 when Robert [the Hawkings' oldest child] was six months old."

"I went into it all with my eyes wide shut," she goes on. "I can remember packing for that trip to Seattle and thinking 'I can't do this - I just don't know how I'm going to manage'. But by that stage I had absolutely no choice."

The trip to Seattle was an early indicator of what was to come as her husband's condition gradually deteriorated, leaving him unable to walk or feed himself and struggling to speak. It didn't help, she says, that he refused to talk about his illness or acknowledge that the family needed more help.

"That's largely my fault too because very early on I said we were going to put the illness to the background of our lives and Stephen - perhaps being a scientist - took me very literally," she explains. "I suppose he thought he had better things to think about and talk about.

"Such denial is not a recipe for a good relationship in the long term, however. If I tried to talk about it he would look very hurt and then I would feel very guilty. But I needed to have his support in what I was doing."

She describes weekends where the scientist would sit quietly in his wheelchair, taking no notice of her or the children, as she worried that he was ill. Then he would smile and say he had solved some impossible equation - all in his head.

Then in 1985, the physicist became critically ill while at an event in Geneva. He had slipped into a coma and doctors suggested to his wife that the life-support machines be switched off. She was having none of it, but the resulting tracheotomy robbed Hawking of his remaining powers of speech and meant 24-hour nursing care would be required for the rest of his life.

By this time Hawking's book, A Brief History Of Time, had brought him global fame and acclaim. But for his wife the twin-headed monster of fame and round-the-clock care was having a "disastrous" impact on family life. She says the public image of the proud family basking in Stephen's glory could not have been more different from the life-sapping emotional and physical reality of caring for someone - especially someone so well-known - with such complex medical needs. She was close to breaking point on many occasions, she admits, but like many full-time carers, could not conceive of walking away.

"You blame yourself for so much," she explains. "That becomes a way of life. If the other person is upset you think it must be your fault. You don't make any allowances for yourself for being human. I think it is very hard for people who have never had first-hand experience of such a situation to understand how hard it is to cope. No matter how bad I was feeling, I always thought, 'Stephen must be feeling worse'."

Surprisingly, even for the 1980s when disability was not spoken of so openly, very little practical support was on offer to the Hawkings.

"There was very little help from the NHS at the time, just the odd visit from the district nurse," Hawking explains. "And no advice or support on things like how to engage the care you needed. I had to write to the US begging for funds from a philanthropic organisation to enable us to pay for nurses and carers. And when they came into our home it was very difficult."

Among those who came into the Hawking home was Elaine Mason, the nurse Stephen would eventually leave his wife for. Some 25 years later, Jane Hawking avoids mentioning Mason by name, but says the sycophantic attitude of many of those around her husband at the time eventually made life unbearable. In her first book Music To Move The Stars, written when she was no longer in contact with her ex-husband, she remarks that by the 1980s her principal role had become "telling him he was not God".

"After the success of Stephen's book a whole new crowd of people became very interested in him and the family was just pushed into a corner," she explains. "Some people led us to believe that we weren't worthy to breathe in the air of the 'great man' because we weren't actually nursing him 24 hours a day.

"I remember I was doing some teaching at the time, and someone said, 'Oh Jane, looking after Stephen is so easy by comparison to looking after my children at home - why don't you give up your teaching and look after Stephen?' To say that in Stephen's presence was unforgivable. He obviously thought, 'Here's someone for whom I'm no trouble at all'."

By this time, Jane had become close - initially platonically, then romantically - to Jonathan Hellyer-Jones, the widowed choirmaster who moved in to the family home in the late 1970s to help with caring duties.

Stephen Hawking left the family home in 1990 to move in with Mason, whom he married in 1995, declaring it at the time as "wonderful - I have married the woman I love". Jane Hawking says despite the long-term difficulties in their relationship she didn't see it coming.

"I was very, very hurt," she says. "I thought we had achieved a way of life, and if he wanted to have his lady friends I wasn't really going to object. I thought we were going to keep the family together, and a home together. He worked for it, but I'd spent all my life creating it.

"When you are so summarily left - my youngest son Tim and I were away for a weekend with friends - it is a terrific shock. The rug was pulled from under my feet. I felt so aimless after that. It was a way of life, and I was totally acclimatised to it. It took a very long time to move on."

In 1997, Jane Hawking married Hellyer-Jones, who she says "saved me from drowning". These days they share their time between their Cambridge home and a house in France, where she gardens, dances and sings in a number of choirs. She credits Hellyer-Jones, her children and three grandchildren with the happiness and fulfilment she has found in recent years.

"I was so lucky that Jonathan came into my life," she smiles. "I was in an absolutely desperate state. Had it not been for him, I would have gone under much sooner. I thought the film handled all that beautifully."

The Hawking family is now reconciled, as the beaming pictures of them taken at the London premiere of The Theory Of Everything showed.

Stephen Hawking divorced his second wife in 2006. He and Jane now regularly meet up together with their children Robert, 48, a computer scientist who lives in Seattle, 45-year-old Lucy, a writer, and Tim, 36, who works in marketing. Jane Hawking describes her concern for and wish to protect her ex-husband as "innate", adding that it is "so important that there is still a family unit in existence".

Hawking feels no bitterness about the past, she says. She is angered, however, by the austerity cuts she believes are having a devastating effect on disabled people and their families.

"It's a disgrace that very wealthy corporations based in this country somehow get away with paying the minimum of tax while the people who are suffering, the disabled, get practically no support from the government and are seeing their services cut," she says. "So many of them have no voice at all."

An Oscar-winning film and a best-selling memoir ensure that Jane Hawking's voice has a good chance of being heard when it comes to future narratives about her ex-husband and his remarkable life. And as her book makes clear, the lives of all those who care for the disabled are extraordinary in their own way too.

Jane Hawking will discuss her life with Stephen Hawking and her book Travelling To Infinity (Alma Books, £9.99) at Aye Write! on Wednesday, April 22, 7.30pm

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