P D James

P D James (Baroness James of Holland Park OBE) was born in 1920 and educated at the Cambridge High School for Girls. She is the widow of a doctor and has two children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

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.

She is the author of sixteen crime novels, twelve of them featuring the poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh. She has also written two non-fiction books.

P D James was a Governor of the BBC from 1988-93. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts. From 1988-93 she was on the Board of the British Council and a member of its Literary Advisory Committee, and from 1988-92 she was on the Board of the Arts Council and Chairman of its Literature Advisory Panel. She chaired the Booker Prize panel of judges in 1987. She was Chairman of the Society of Authors from 1984-86 and appointed President in 1997.

She has received seven honorary doctorates from British universities and is an Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, St Hilda's College, Oxford and Girton College, Cambridge.

She has served as a Justice of the Peace in inner London and Middlesex.

She was awarded and OBE in 1983 and a life peerage as Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991.