In her book, Music To Move The Stars, Jane Hawking describes the man who revolutionised our perception of the universe as a `tyrant' who ``has the body of a Holocaust victim and the needs of an infant''.

By portraying her husband as an ``all-powerful emperor'' who ``has a way of manipulating people and situations so he has his own way,'' she has stirred up a poisonous war of words in the cloistered world of Cambridge'elite academia.

Last week, Hawking's former loyal secretary -- who spent hours with the scientist, transcribing his thoughts into the famous A Brief History Of Time, which sold 25 million copies -- challenged Hawking's extraordinary claims about their 30-year marriage.

Laura Gentry, from Caxton inCambridgeshire, accompanied the Hawkings across the world, attending dozens of transatlantic conferences where Hawking left fellow physicists staggered by the complexity of thought from a man whose body was wracked by motor neurone disease.

She said yesterday: ``Hearing him described as a cruel, scheming man really upsets me. It is wrong for people to imagine he is like that. He was a good and kind man to me. If there was another side it's just because we spent so much time together.''

While Gentry travelled and worked with Hawking, she witnessed bitter clashes between Jane and her husband.

``I can honestly say that Jane was often extremely unreasonable. She used to shout at him and say really awful things.''

``She taunted him about his physical disabilities and was sometimes extremely threatening. When a man is sitting helpless in a wheelchair relying on life support systems to keep him alive, it is so easy to be cruel.''

``Jane was guilty of this on more than one occasion. The first time I heardher shout at him I was really shocked because in some ways he is so defenceless.''

``It was clear there was no love left in their marriage, but still they stayed together, even though she spent a lot of time with her boyfriend, Jonathan.''

She still treasures the first draft of the book that put Hawking on an international stage. ``We spent a lot of time together,'' she says. ``It was very intense. There was never anything between the two of us, but I was always there for him. It wasn't like having any other nine till five job. He needed to have a secretary who could devote herself to his work. I was happy to do that because it was so rewarding working with someone as brilliant as Stephen.''

Gentry still remembers one particularly painful day in 1985 when the already seriously disabled scientist contracted pneumonia. ``He was in Geneva at the European Centre for Nuclear Research. He was so close to death they put him on a life support machine and no one thought he would survive. Unfortunately Jane wasoff with her boyfriend, but when she did turn up she briefly contemplated switching off his life support machine. It was unbelievable''.

After a series of emergency operations, one of which removed his trachea, Hawking was left without speech until he had an electronic voice box installed some years later -- which his wife now describes as ``dehumanising''.

When Jane Hawking first met her future husband, she was 21 and still doing an arts degree. Stephen, who was two years older, had already been told he had just two years left to live.

Despite this, the couple married because, as Jane describes: ``I was in love with Stephen, with his wicked sense of humour. The light in his eyes was magnetic. I knew nothing about his illness early, except it would kill him and we never discussed it. That was a big mistake''.

A few years later she describes how Hawing became obsessed with physics. ``I found it very disturbing. He would sometimes sit for whole weekends. I was excluded and didn't know how tocope''.

In her book, Jane resorts to shocking imagery when trying to explain why she embarked on an intimate relationship with chorister Jonathan Hellyer Jones.

``Intellectually, Stephen was a towering giant...bodily he was as helpless as a newborn. The functions I fulfilled were all maternal rather than marital...It was unnatural even to feel desire for someone with the body of a Holocaust victim and the undeniable needs of an infant''.

The couple eventually split up in 1991. Four years later, Hawking married his nurse Elaine Mason -- the wife of the man who designed his voice box.

For Gentry, the recriminations heaped on the scientists are too awful to be forgotten.

``Many people will back me up,'' she says. ``He is a good man who was wonderful to his staff. I must be awful for him to listen to so much bitterness''.

-- The Observer News Service