Singer Amy Winehouse found dead

Police confirmed that a 27-year-old female was pronounced dead at the home in Camden Square northern London; the cause of death was not immediately known. London Ambulance Services said Winehouse had died before the two ambulance crews it sent arrived at the scene.

Born in 1983 to taxi driver Mitch Winehouse and his pharmacist wife Janis,Winehouse grew up in the north London suburbs.

After an album titled Frank,released in 2003,Winehouse broke up with her boyfriend,suffered a long period of writers block and,she later said,smoked a lot of marijuana. The album she eventually produced was a sensation. Released in UK in 2006,Back to Black brought Winehouse global fame.

But increasingly,her personal life began to overshadow her career. She acknowledged struggling with eating disorders and told a paper she had been diagnosed as manic depressive. Photographs caught her unsteady on her feet,and she appeared unhealthily thin,with scabs on her face and marks on her arms.

Winehouses health often appeared fragile. Her father said she had developed the lung disease emphysema from cigarettes and crack. She left the hospital for a brief period in 2008,but then it was back to a London clinic for treatment,continuing the cycle of music,excess and recuperation that marked her career.