One of France’s best-loved singer-songwriters, Francoise hardly, has died at the age of 80.

Her son Thomas Dutronc, who is also a musician wrote on social media that “Mum is gone’.

Hardly had been ill for some time before her death, revealing in 2004 that she had been diagnosed with lymphoma.

In 2015, she was placed in an induced coma for weeks following a fall and 2021, she said she had cancer in one of her ears and felt “close to the end” of he life.

Hardly was born in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944 and raised by her mother. Her burst on to the music scene in 1962 and became a cultural icon who inspired the likes of Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan.

She was married once, to the singer Jacques Dutronc, with whom she had her son Thomas. They separated in the late 1980s but she would often refer to her ex-husband as the love her life.