BBC News
Dame Barbara Windsor, who has died at the age of 83, became the nation s favourite pin-up, the bubbly blonde who packed a lot of personality into her 4ft 10in frame.
Her journey from saucy minx in the Carry On films to the matriarch of the Queen Vic in EastEnders made her a national treasure.
Her teenage life was troubled. She was rejected by her father, something that drove her into a string of stormy personal relationships.
But she went on to be a consummate actress who carved out a successful career on both stage and screen.
Barbara Ann Deeks was born in Shoreditch, east London, on 6 August 1937, the daughter of a fruit and veg street seller and a dressmaker.
Babs Windsor: the daring, giggling pearly queen of the screen Mark Lawson
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When Barbara Deeks, a 16-year-old actor from east London, was encouraged to choose a stage name in 1953, it might seem arrogant that she borrowed from the newly crowned Queen of the United Kingdom.
As it turned out, though, the cheeky moniker proved prophetic. It grew to seem entirely fitting that the long-serving monarch should share a surname with a woman who became showbiz aristocracy.
She was accepted as British acting’s Pearly Queen – her Cockney accent and background always important to her career-defining roles – long before Elizabeth II conferred on her the title of Dame of the British Empire in 2016.