MARIANNE FAITHFULL is a survivor. The excesses of the 1960s, heroin addiction, homelessness, cancer and the broken back she sustained last year haven’t been able to stop her. More recently, she fractured her hip during a holiday in Greece, and while that has slowed her down a little – “these things always take longer to heal than the doctors say” – Faithfull carries on regardless, always putting her music first.

The back injury saw her laid up, recuperating, for the best part of six months. For her current hip ailment, she can’t take strong painkillers – an unfortunate by-product of her past dependencies – so, has to grin and bear it in her Paris flat, with nothing more potent than paracetamol.

“I can’t even smoke,” she adds, “I gave up completely with the help of some nicotine patches, and now use nothing but an e-cigarette.” Other than a pretty heavy “salt habit”, Faithfull is now virtually viceless, but does have a problem with our nation’s capital city.

“I hate London,” she says emphatically about all the baggage that comes with being there, a torturous memory around every corner and “impertinent”

questions on the lips of everyone she meets.

“I have happy memories of London, too,” she says. “My son lives there, my grandchildren are there, I’ve got friends there, but the press do torment me to the point where if I’m writing a song and I have a memory of the 1960s that I want to include, I’ll leave it out and not use it. One line in a song and I get questions about Mick Jagger, the poor old thing. He didn’t ask for this either.”

Faithfull and Jagger were an item for four years between 1966 and 1970, a world-famous item who symbolised all the danger, glamour, romance and luxury associated with London at the time.

She says Britain turned on her after the infamous ‘Redlands bust’ – when police raided the home of Rolling Stone Keith Richards and found Faithfull naked under a fur rug – and it’s kind of been downhill ever since. Despite her protestations, she is now an unlikely national treasure.

“It was all a hell of a long time ago,” she says. “It’s time everyone got over it, I think. Including me.”

Her new album is called Give My Love To London, a slightly scathing new collection of songs featuring contributions from Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Jim Sclavunos, Roger Waters, Ed Harcourt, Adrian Utley, Steve Earle, Anna Calvi, Pat Leonard and Tom McRae. To mark its release, she’s embarking on a world tour, and later this year will release Marianne Faithfull: A Life On Record, a collection of photographs taken throughout her career.

“That title’s meant to be ambiguous. But okay, it’s a little sarcastic. I don’t hate London, really,” she says, softening. “Let’s say I’m somewhere in between, depending on which aspect of London I’m thinking of. But talking about this stuff is never a picnic.

“I love writing, singing, performing, making records... and the price I pay is that I have to be Marianne Faithfull.”

Now 67, Faithfull says she started writing for Give My Love To London the last time she was in the city, promoting 2011 album Horses And High Heels. When back in Paris, she met up with songwriter Steve Earle, who agreed to co-write some of the songs she’d been mapping out while laid up recovering. “I love working with Nick (Cave),” she says. “And he must like working with me, although he didn’t like the record of covers I made. At all,” she adds, referring to 2008’s double album of reworked songs, Easy Come, Easy Go. “He thought it was disgraceful, and that I should write my own songs. He’s very critical. He knows me very well, and he knows I have tendency to sloth and laziness. I call it writer’s block, but he said, ‘That’s rubbish, you just don’t want to do it’.”

She now admits she didn’t really have anything she wanted to say, but things are different now, and she has plenty to get off her chest.

“I think this is my best album. I actually like it better than Broken English,” she says “This album’s warmer. The thing about Broken English that people like so much, and it really suited the times, was that it was icy cold,”

Faithfull adds. “Give My Love To London is not cold, it’s really passionate and really intense.

“It’s everything I am.”

  • Give My Love To London is out on Monday