Hawking's wife quizzed by police

Professor Stephen Hawking's wife has been questioned by police over allegations that she attacked him.

Elaine Hawking, 53, spent almost an hour with officers assigned to investigate claims that she repeatedly assaulted the scientist.

She was not arrested and left the police station in Bottisham, near Cambridge, with lawyers and a friend.

Mrs Hawking was questioned after the professor's private nursing staff alleged that he was being regularly assaulted by her.

The claims, made this year, suggested she was being deliberately cruel towards the physicist, who suffers from motor neurone disease and is confined to a wheelchair. Professor Hawking, 62, who speaks through a computerised voicebox because of his paralysis, has steadfastly denied the allegations and issued a statement denouncing the stories as "false".

He said: "I am profoundly disappointed by the circulation of such personal and inaccurate information. I firmly and wholeheartedly reject the allegations that I have been assaulted."

The professor, currently in hospital being treated for a chest infection, was interviewed by police after he was found to have injuries including a broken wrist and cuts to his face. Ten of his former nurses had claimed he was being subjected to physical abuse at the hands of his second wife. Some told how he had left messages typed on his computer screen, begging them not to leave him alone.

Friends and family have expressed their concern over the allegations with the professor's youngest son Tim, 24, describing the alleged abuse as "completely despicable".

But the author, who became a global figure in the Eighties after writing the best-selling book A Brief History of Time, insists there is no substance to the claims.

A spokesman for Cambridge Police said today: "We have spoken to Mrs Hawking with her full agreement and our investigation continues. I would emphasise that she was not arrested."