Biographie de P. D. James
P-D James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service as an administrator, and the experience she gained from her job helped her with the background for " Shroud for a Nightingale ", " The Black Tower " and " A Mind to Murder ". In 1968 she entered the Home Office as Principal, working first in the police department concerned with the forensic science service, and later in the criminal policy department.
She retired in 1979. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was a Governor of the BBC from 1988 to 1993 and was a member of the Board of the British Council from 1988 to 1993. She served on the Arts Council and was Chairman of its Literary Advisory Panel from 1988 to 1992. She has served as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She bas won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, and has received honorary degrees from six 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 has been a widow for over thirty-five years and has two children and five grandchildren. Her novels include " An Unsuitable Job for a Woman ", " Innocent Blood ", " The Skull Beneath the Skin ", " Death of an Expert Witness ", " A Taste for Death ", " Devices and Desires ", " Cover Her Face ", " Unnatural Causes ", " The Children of Men ", " Original Sin ", " A Certain Justice and Death in Holy Orders ", several of which are published by Penguin.
She is co-author, with T. A. Critchley, of " The Maul and the PearTree ".