British novelist P. D. James.

P.D. James

(1920 - 2014)

The novelist P.D. James had to quit school at age sixteen for want of funds, finding work in a theater, the Red Cross, and Britain’s Department of Home Affairs before publishing her first book, Cover Her Face, in 1962. She has since published nineteen more, most of them turned into television movies or feature films. She is best known as a crime-fiction and mystery writer, publishing many books revolving around a Scotland Yard detective named Adam Dalgliesh. About writing she once said, “I don’t think you need to describe sex in detail. Same with television. All these heaving buttocks. It’s not erotic—perhaps it is for a twelve-year-old, but not to an adult.”

All Writing

A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.

—P.D. James, 1992

Issues Contributed