PD James

PD James is an iconic English novelist and crime fiction writer whose most well-known character, the poet-detective Adam Dalgleish, brought her fame – but not until later in her life. Born in Oxford in 1920, Phyllis Dorothy James left school at 16 to care for her siblings and take a job in a tax office. A marriage and two daughters soon followed but family life was disrupted by the Second World War. Her husband was an army doctor and returned from his war service in poor mental health, often requiring hospitalization, and her parents-in-law frequently cared for their daughters. It was during this period that James studied administration and she went on to work from 1949 to 1968 for a hospital board, writing fiction in her spare time. ...

Her debut novel, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962 but James continued to work, leaving the hospital board after her husband’s death in 1964 and taking up a role with the Home Office. She stayed there until her retirement in 1979 and was given a life peerage twelve years later.

While James primarily wrote mystery fiction starring Adam Dalgliesh or Cordelia Gray, she is perhaps best known for two standalone novels: Death Comes to Pemberley (2011) and The Children of Men (1992). The former is a continuation of Pride and Prejudice with a murder mystery twist; the latter, in a dramatic shift for James, is a dystopian sci-fi novel about a world facing mass infertility and possible extinction.

Many of PD James’ books have been adapted for TV and film over the years and she has received awards from the Crime Writers’ Association and Mystery Writers of America. A formidable figure in both mystery and speculative fiction she was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Governor of the BBC and a member of the Arts Council, and served as President of the Society of Authors until 2013.