A barrister was accused yesterday of providing forged medical records to support her defence against a High Court libel action.

Constance Briscoe, 51, is being sued by her mother over allegations of childhood ill-treatment that form the basis of her memoir Ugly. Episodes in the book were fabricated or “grossly exaggerated”, it was claimed yesterday.

William Panton, for Carmen Bris-coe-Mitchell, said that Ms Briscoe had invented incidents in which her mother flew a remote-controlled aeroplane into her face, cutting her cheek, and in which, she said, her mother slashed her wrist as a punishment.A weapon made from a plank that, in the book, Mrs Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, uses to beat her daughter, “never” existed.

Mr Panton said that a suicide attempt in 1968 in which Ms Briscoe drank bleach because she thought of herself as a germ and “knew that Domestos kills all known germs” was improbable because the advertisement slogan did not predate 1979. Ms Briscoe denied each accusation.

In his cross-examination Mr Panton suggested that copies of two letters from St Thomas’ Hospital, South London, dating from 1972, were fakes. They report that after an operation to remove lumps from her breasts, Ms Briscoe told a nurse “that her mother had hurt her breasts because she wet the bed . . . [that] she was made to sleep in a wet bed and beaten with a stick. She claimed that she had tried to get in a home. She expressed a wish to die.” The letters also reveal that “her stepfather had burnt her”.

Ms Briscoe said that she could not recall the conversation, which is not in her book. She added that the original documents had apparently been mislaid when she moved medical practices.

“It seems as if it is just these two letters [from the bundle of her medical notes requested from St Thomas’] that have been mislaid,” Mr Panton said.

“Have you any explanation as to why these letters are not available? Could it be that these two letters are not genuine?” “No,” she answered.

Ugly recounts Ms Briscoe’s alleged beatings at the hands of her mother and stepfather, Garfield Eastman.

However, Ms Briscoe said yesterday: “I did not report any of the assaults to my GP.”

In the book and in court she asserted her conviction that the lumps were caused by her mother “twisting my nipples and punching me”. Mr Panton produced a doctor’s note that described them as fibroadenomas, benign lumps thought to be related to sensitivity to oestrogen.

The suggestion that Ms Briscoe had made up material was “just nonsense”, she said. The case continues.

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