P. D. James

English crime writer

Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL (3 August 1920:– 27 November 2014), known professionally as P. D. James, was an English novelist and life peer. Her rise to fame came with her series of detective novels featuring Adam Dalgliesh, the police commander and poet.

1 Life and career
2 Film and television
3 Books
- 3.1 Novels
- 3.2 Non-fiction
4 TV and film adaptations
- 4.1 Adam Dalgliesh series
- 4.2 Other adaptations
5 Selected awards and honours
- 5.1 Honours
- 5.2 Awards
6 Interviews
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links

Life and career

James was born in Oxford, the daughter of Sidney Victor James, a tax inspector, and his wife, Dorothy Mary James. She was educated at the British School in Ludlow and Cambridge High School for Girls. Her mother was committed to a mental hospital when James was in her mid-teens.

She had to leave school at the age of sixteen to work to take care of her younger siblings, sister Monica, and brother Edward, because her family did not have much money and her father did not believe in higher education for girls. She worked in a tax office in Ely for three years and later found a job as an *istant stage manager for the Festival Theatre in Cambridge. She married Ernest Connor Bantry White (called "Connor"), an army doctor, on 8 August 1941. They had two daughters, Clare and Jane.

White returned from the Second World War mentally ill and was ins*utionalised. With her daughters being mostly cared for by Connor's parents, James studied hospital administration, and from 1949 to 1968 worked for a hospital board in London. She began writing in the mid-1950s, using her maiden name ("My genes are James genes").

Her first novel, Cover Her Face, featuring the investigator and poet Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard, was published in 1962. Dalgliesh's last name comes from a teacher of English at Cambridge High School and his first name is that of Miss Dalgliesh's father. Many of James's mystery novels take place against the backdrop of UK bureaucracies, such as the criminal justice system and the National Health Service, in which she worked for decades starting in the 1940s. Two years after the publication of Cover Her Face, James's husband died on 5 August 1964. Prior to his death, James had not felt able to change her job: "He would periodically discharge himself from hospital, sometimes at very short notice, and I never knew quite what I would have to face when I returned home from the office. It was not a propitious time to look for promotion or for a new job, which would only impose additional strain. But now I felt the strong need to look for a change of direction." She applied for the grade of Principal in the Home Civil Service and held positions as a civil servant within several sections of the Home Office, including the criminal section. She worked in government service until her retirement in 1979.

On 7 February 1991, James was created a life peer as Baroness James of Holland Park, of Southwold in the County of Suffolk. She sat in the House of Lords as a Conservative. She was an Anglican and a lay patron of the Prayer Book Society. Her 2001 work, Death in Holy Orders, displays her familiarity with the inner workings of church hierarchy. Her later novels were often set in a community closed in some way, such as a publishing house, barristers' chambers, a theological college, an island or a private clinic. Talking About Detective Fiction was published in 2009. Over her writing career, James also wrote many essays and short stories for periodicals and anthologies, which have yet to be collected. She revealed in 2011 that The Private Patient was the final Dalgliesh novel.

As guest editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme in December 2009, James conducted an interview with the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, in which she seemed critical of some of his decisions. Regular Today presenter Evan Davis commented that "She shouldn't be guest editing; she should be permanently presenting the programme." In 2008, she was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame at the inaugural ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards.

In August 2014, James was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

James' main home was her house on Holland Park Avenue, the area from which she took her *le; she also owned homes in Oxford and Southwold.

James died at her home in Oxford on 27 November 2014, aged 94. She is survived by her two daughters, Clare and Jane, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Film and television

During the 1980s, many of James's mystery novels were adapted for television by Anglia Television for the ITV network in the UK. These productions have been broadcast in other countries, including the US on the PBS network. They featured Roy Marsden as Adam Dalgliesh. According to James in conversation with Bill Link on 3:May 2001 at the Writer's Guild Theatre, Los Angeles, Marsden "is not my idea of Dalgliesh, but I would be very surprised if he were." The BBC adapted Death in Holy Orders in 2003, and The Murder Room in 2004, both as one-off dramas starring Martin Shaw as Dalgliesh. In Dalgliesh (2021), Bertie Carvel starred as the *ular, enigmatic detective–poet. Six episodes, shown as three two-parters, premiered on Acorn TV on 1 November 2021 in the United States followed by a Channel 5 premiere on 4 November in the United Kingdom.

Her novel The Children of Men (1992) was the basis for the feature film Children of Men (2006), directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Michael Caine. Despite substantial changes from the book, James was reportedly pleased with the adaptation and proud to be *ociated with the film.

Books

TV and film adaptations

Adam Dalgliesh series

Death of an Expert Witness (1983)
Shroud for a Nightingale (1984)
Cover Her Face (1985)
The Black Tower (1985)
A Taste For Death (1988)
Devices and Desires (1991)
Unnatural Causes (1993)
A Mind to Murder (1995)
Original Sin (1997)
A Certain Justice (1998)
Death in Holy Orders (2003)
The Murder Room (2004)
Dalgliesh (2021)

Other adaptations

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1982, 1997–1998, 1999–2001)
Children of Men (feature film) (2006)
Death Comes to Pemberley (2011)

Selected awards and honours

Honours

Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 1983
*ociate Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, 1986
Life peerage, Baroness James of Holland Park, of Southwold in the County of Suffolk, 7 February 1991
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
President of the Society of Authors 1997–2013

Honorary doctorates

University of Buckingham, 1992
University of Hertfordshire, 1994
University of Glasgow, 1995
University of Essex, 1996
University of Durham, 1998
University of Portsmouth, 1999
University of London, 1993

Honorary fellowships

St Hilda's College, Oxford, 1996
Girton College, Cambridge, 2000
Downing College, Cambridge, 2000
Kellogg College, Oxford
Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, 2012

Awards

1971 Best Novel Award, Mystery Writers of America (runner-up): Shroud for a Nightingale
1972 Crime Writers' *ociation (CWA) Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction: Shroud for a Nightingale
1973 Best Novel Award, Mystery Writers of America (runner-up): An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
1976 CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction: The Black Tower
1986 Mystery Writers of America Best Novel Award (runner-up): A Taste for Death
1987 CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction: A Taste for Death
1987 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger (lifetime achievement award)
1992 Deo Gloria Award: The Children of Men
1992 The Best Translated Crime Fiction of the Year in *an, Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! 1992: Devices and Desires
1999 Grandmaster Award, Mystery Writers of America
2002 WH Smith Literary Award (shortlist): Death in Holy Orders
2005 British Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year (shortlist): The Murder Room
2010 Best Critical Nonfiction Anthony Award for Talking About Detective Fiction
2010 Nick Clarke Award for interview with Director-General of the BBC Mark Thompson whilst guest editor of Today radio programme.

Interviews

Shusha Guppy (Summer 1995). "P. D. James, The Art of Fiction No. 141". The Paris Review. Summer 1995 (135).
The Guardian, 4-3-01. Accessed 2010-09-15
The Sunday Herald newspaper (U.K.), 13-9-08. Accessed 2010-09-15
CBC Radio hour-long interview by Eleanor Wachtel, 2000. Accessed 2 Aug. 2020
The Globe and Mail (Canada), 30-1-09. Accessed 2010-09-15
The Daily Telegraph newspaper (U.K.), 21-7-10. Accessed 2010-09-15
The Independent newspaper (U.K.), 29-9-08. Accessed 2010-09-15
The American Spectator magazine (U.S.), 4-1-10. Accessed 2010-09-15
Extended audio discussion on Death Comes to Pemberley for the Faber website. Recorded October 2011.
Video interview discussing Death Comes to Pemberley. Filmed October 2011.

References

"P D James". UK Civil Service. Retrieved 13 November 2021. P D James was born in 1920 in Walton Street, Oxford
Webb, Richard. "St Laurence's C of E Primary School". Geograph. geograph.org.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2021. In 1972 St Laurence's C of E Primary School closed. It merged with the former British School on Old Street and Ludlow had just one primary school. This is the site of the shared sports field of the two schools.
James, P. D. (1 August 2020). "I'll never forget my first love". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
Symons, Julian. "THE QUEEN OF CRIME: P.D. JAMES: Book Review". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 November 2021. When I was a child, at Ludlow in Shropshire, I saw children going to school without coats or shoes. There was real poverty in a lot of homes.
Wallace, David (2 December 2014). "Letter: PD James, a Shropshire l*". the Guardian. Retrieved 13 November 2021. We used to explore all the paths around the castle, all around the hill. Down below there was the river Teme and the water meadows. I can remember very, very clearly the school I went to, and the names of some of the children come right back to me. The British school, it was called, and the earliest poem I learned there was called Mamble.
"Remembering P.D. James". The Prayer Book Society of Canada. Retrieved 13 November 2021. Later, at a church school in Ludlow, Shropshire, she was required to learn the Collect each week.
"Desert Island Discs: P D James". BBC Radio 4. BBC. 2002. Retrieved 13 November 2021. Sue Lawley's castaway is crime writer and conservative life peer P D James.
"Desert Island Discs: P D James". BBC Radio 4. BBC. 1982. Retrieved 13 November 2021. Roy Plomley's castaway is writer P D James.
"P D James". ‎Desert Island Discs: Archive 2000-2005. Apple Podcasts. Retrieved 13 November 2021. Phyllis attended an old-fashioned grammar school where she enjoyed English lessons
https://4degreesbrewing.com/hill-70-info/corporal-acton/
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/a/A13533016
https://www.ludlowsoldiersww1.co.uk/page.php?n=Rogers,%20William%20Ernest
"About". P. D. James. Retrieved 13 November 2021.

External links

The British Council's Contemporary Writers. Accessed 2016-08-03
Faber and Faber (U.K.), publisher. Accessed 2010-09-15
Random House (U.S.), publisher. Accessed 2010-09-15
Penguin Books (U.K.), publisher. Accessed 2010-09-15
P. D. James at IMDb
Portraits of P. D. James at the National Portrait Gallery, London
"P.D. James (Baroness James of Holland Park OBE JP)", Fellows Remembered, The Royal Society of Literature.

P. D. James Is A Member Of

49 Year Olds

Oxford, England