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P. D. James

P. D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School.  She is the author of fifteen crime novels, eleven of them featuring the poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh (including A Certain Justice, Death in Holy Orders and Murder Room), and two non-fiction books.  For thirty years she was engaged in public service, first as an administrator in the National Health Service and then in the Home Office, from which she retired in 1979. Her latest novel (a Dalgliesh) is The Lighthouse.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts.  From 1988 to 1993 she was a Governor of the BBC and a member of the Board of the British Council.  From 1988 to 1992 she served on the Arts Council and was Chairman of its Literary Advisory Panel.  She has served as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. 

P. D. James has won awards for crime writing from Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, and has received honorary doctorates from six British universities.  In 1983 she received the OBE, and she was created a life peer in 1991.  In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors.  She is the widow of a doctor and has two children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.