P.D. James Biography

Fast Facts

• Served as a Red Cross nurse during World War II and later worked for the National Health Service to support her family when her husband returned from his military service with a mental disability
• Was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1983 and given a life peerage as Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991
• Was a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Literature and served as the President of the Society of Authors
• Published her first mystery novel, "Cover Her Face," in 1962 at the age of 42, completing the novel by working in the early morning before her hospital job
• Quote: "[on comparisons to genre authors] "That kind of crime writing was dull, in the sense that it was unrealistic, prettifying and romanticizing murder, but having little to do with real blood-and-guts tragedy․․․[with] the harm that murder does․""
• Quote: "[on her early interest in mystery writing] "When I first heard that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, I immediately wondered: did he fall - or was he pushed?""
• Seven of her mystery novels were adapted for the TV series "Mystery!" and broadcast in both Britain and the United States
• Best known as a crime writer who became known as "the Queen of Crime" and was praised for the emotional depth of her frequent main character, police commander and poet Adam Dalgliesh
• The realistic procedural detail in her novels came from her job as an administrator in the forensic science and criminal law divisions at the Department of Home Affairs
• Toured power plants in England, even standing over a nuclear reactor in a protective suit, to inform the setting of her 1989 novel "Devices and Desires․"