PD James
One of our greatest living crime writers...
PD James was born in Oxford on 3 August 1920, the eldest daughter of an Inland Revenue Official. Her family moved to Cambridge when she was 11, where she attended the Cambridge High School for Girls.
James worked for the National Health Service from 1949 until 1968, and the Civil Service until 1979, after which she started writing full time. She was a governor for the BBC (1988-93), and Chairman of the Literature Advisory Panel at both the Arts Council of England (1988-92) and the British Council (1988-93). She was awarded an OBE in 1983 and made a Life Peer (Baroness James of Holland Park) in 1991. Baroness James is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and chaired the Booker Prize Panel of Judges in 1987. She has been President of the Society of Authors since 1997 and has been awarded a string of honorary degrees.
Many of James's novels take the criminal justice system or the health service as their setting - the two areas in which the author spent much of her professional life. Many of her stories feature Scotland Yard's Commander Adam Dalgleish, who made his debut in Cover Her Face. Her latest mystery is Death Comes to Pemberley (2012).
Fact file
Name: Phyllis Dorothy James
Date of birth: 1920
Place of birth: Oxford
Current Home: London
Education: Cambridge High School for Girls
Similar Authors: Dorothy L Sayers, Patricia Highsmith, Colin Dexter, Ngaio Marsh
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Death Comes to Pemberley
(Hardback)
"The year is 1803, and Darcy and Elizabeth have been married for six years. There are now two handsome and healthy sons in the nursery, Elizabeth's beloved sister Jane and her husband Bingley live nearby and the orderly world of...
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More books by PD James
The Private Patient (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 512 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 24/09/2009 |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books Ltd |
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Queen of crime, PD James delivers another Adam Dalgliesh mystery, "The Private Patient". The scar on Rhoda Gradwyn's face was to be... Read more
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Unnatural Causes (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 288 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 01/04/2010 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh had been looking forward to a quiet holiday at his aunt's cottage on Monksmere Head, one of the furthest-flung... Read more
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The Skull Beneath the Skin (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 480 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 03/06/2010 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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Mystery hired to protect a beautiful but neurotic actress, Cordelia Gray soon becomes embroiled in a case as dangerous to her own life as it is... Read more
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Original Sin (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 624 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 03/09/2009 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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The Peverell Press, a two-hundred-year-old publishing firm housed in a dramatic mock-Venetian palace on the Thames, is certainly ripe for change.... Read more
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The Black Tower (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 384 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 06/10/2005 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber |
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The Peverell Press, a two-hundred-year-old publishing firm housed in a dramatic mock-Venetian palace on the Thames, is certainly ripe for change.... Read more
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The Maul and the Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 1811 (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 400 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 04/11/2010 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber |
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In 1811, John Williams was buried with a stake in his heart. Was he the notorious East End killer or his eighth victim in the bizarre and shocking... Read more
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A Mind to Murder (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 288 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 03/09/2009 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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A piercing scream, shattering the evening calm, brings Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh hurrying from his literary party to the nearby Steen... Read more
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Devices and Desires (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 608 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 01/04/2010 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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This is an Adam Dalgliesh Mystery. When Commander Adam Dalgliesh visits Larksoken, a remote headland community on the Norfolk coast in the shadow of... Read more
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A Taste for Death (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 528 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 06/10/2005 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber |
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Two men lie in a welter of blood in the vestry of St Matthew's Church, Paddington, their throats brutally slashed. One is Sir Paul Berowne, a... Read more
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Death of an Expert Witness (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 400 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 03/06/2010 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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When a young girl is found murdered in a field, the scientific examination of the exhibits is just a routine job for the staff of Hoggatt's... Read more
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Time to be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 295 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 06/11/2000 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber |
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In this very personal book, part diary, part memoir, P.D. James considers the 12 months of her life between her 77th and 78th birthdays. She... Read more
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Innocent Blood (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 432 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 03/06/2010 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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This is a stand-alone thriller from P. D. James. Philippa Palfrey, adopted as a child, believes herself to be the motherless, illegitimate daughter... Read more
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Shroud for a Nightingale (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 400 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 01/04/2010 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a... Read more
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The Lighthouse (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 480 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 07/05/2009 |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books Ltd |
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Commander Adam Dalgliesh returns in "The Lighthouse", PD James' number three bestseller. Combe Island off the Cornish coast offers... Read more
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The Children of Men - Revolutionary Writing (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 352 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 17/06/2010 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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The year is 2021. No child has been born for twenty-five years. The human race faces extinction. Under the despotic rule of Xan Lyppiat, the Warden... Read more
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Death Comes to Pemberley (Hardback)
| Format: | Hardback 320 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 03/11/2011 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber Crime |
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"The year is 1803, and Darcy and Elizabeth have been married for six years. There are now two handsome and healthy sons in the nursery,... Read more
RRP £18.99
£15.10
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Talking About Detective Fiction (Paperback)
by P. D. James
| Format: | Paperback 160 pages |
|---|---|
| Published: | 07/10/2010 |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber |
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P. D. James brings a lifetime of reading and writing crime fiction to bear on this personal history of the genre, from the birth of the detective... Read more
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