Prosecutor Gareth Patterson QC said at a previous hearing: "She was unhappy about this and this was something he had often wanted to do when they were intimate."

He told jurors Deakin-White became angry and jealous after Ms Parsons began a relationship with a colleague a few weeks before the killing.

The prosecutor said Deakin-White launched the attack after she told him she was leaving him.

"Unwilling to accept that she was going to leave him, he used a metal bar to hit her repeatedly around the head while she was showering in the Docklands flat which they shared," Mr Patterson said.

Deakin-White fled the flat before confessing to a friend, who persuaded him to hand himself in.

In interviews with police, Deakin-White admitted attacking her with a metal bar but denied murder, claiming it was an "accident".

At his sentencing, Ms Parsons' sister, Eve, spoke of her family's grief in a victim impact statement read out in court.

She described Ms Parsons as the "bright light" of the family and a "beautiful person".

"Nothing could have prepared me to deal with this loss," she said. "All of our family are as heartbroken as it is possible to be."

Richard Carey-Hughes, mitigating, said Deakin-White had expressed remorse in the police station when he was recorded talking to himself saying: "I feel like the nastiest person in the world. She would have been in so much pain."