Baroness James of Holland Park, better known as P D James, was born in Oxford in 1920, the eldest child of Sidney James, an Inland Revenue official, and Dorothy Hone. The family moved to Ludlow when she was about four, remaining there until they moved, when she was eleven, to Cambridge, where she attended the Cambridge and County High School for Girls. She left at the age of sixteen to work in a tax office in Ely. She married Ernest Connor Bantry White [known as Connor], a medical student, in 1941. After the war, P D James lived in Goodmayes, Essex, until it became clear that Connor’s continuing psychiatric illness would necessitate additional family support. In the spring of 1948, she moved with her two young daughters to live with her parents-in-law, Dr and Mrs Ernest Bantry White. This enabled her to begin working full time with the North West Regional Hospital Board (Paddington) in an administrative capacity. At this time the extended family lived alongside the GP practice at 448 Green Lane, Ilford, in Essex. Following Dr Bantry White’s retirement in 1961 and subsequent move to Suffolk , P D James bought a small house in Richmond Park Road, Kingston upon Thames. She then moved to Holland Park Avenue in London W11 in March 1983, living there until her death. P D James remained with the National Health Service until 1968, when she joined the Civil Service, entering as a Principal in the Home Office. She later worked in the forensic and criminal justice departments, until she retired in 1979 to become a full-time writer. P D James had known from childhood that she wanted to be a writer: indeed, her first literary success was to win a short story competition at the Cambridge and County High School. She did not, however, begin writing in earnest until she was in her mid-thirties. She wrote her first novel, 'Cover her Face' (published in 1962), while working for Paddington Hospital, taking evening classes at the City of London College and visiting her husband in hospital (he died in 1964). She wrote fourteen crime novels featuring the detective Adam Dalgliesh, two featuring the private detective Cordelia Gray, and three further novels: ‘Innocent Blood’ (1980); ‘The Children of Men’ (1992); and ‘Death Comes to Pemberley’ (2011). She also published the following non-fiction: ‘The Maul and the Pear Tree’ (1971, with T A Critchley, a historical reconstruction of the Ratcliffe Highway murders); ‘Time to be in Earnest’ (Faber 1999), which she described as ‘a fragment of autobiography’ and which includes childhood memories and her reflections on life and literature; and ‘Talking About Detective Fiction’ (2009), a personal look at the history of the genre. She also wrote short stories and a play entitled ‘A Private Treason’. P D James had a long working relationship with Joyce McLennan, beginning in 1976 when Joyce typed the draft of ‘Death of an Expert Witness’. She typed up the manuscripts of all of P D James’ subsequent books, with the exception of ‘The Skull Beneath the Skin’, which was written while P D James was living in Ireland for a year. In 1991 Joyce began working as P D James’ secretary every afternoon in Holland Park Avenue. She became her full time personal assistant in 2000 and they worked closely until P D James’ death. Her last book, ‘Death Comes to Pemberley’, written in 2011, is dedicated to Joyce McLennan with these words: ‘To Joyce McLennan, Friend and personal assistant who has typed my novels for thirty-five years. With affection and gratitude’. P D James lectured widely and produced a prolific number of reviews, forewords, introductions and articles. Many of her lectures and articles were on crime writing, but she also wrote and talked about religious subjects, the preservation of the English language and other subjects of interest to her. She is published widely overseas. Her books have attracted prizes and awards in Britain and the United States and they have been filmed for television in both countries. Her futuristic dystopian novel, 'The Children of Men', was made into a feature film of the same name in 2006. In 2013, 'Death Comes to Pemberley', her sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, was dramatised for television. P D James' connections with Cambridge and East Anglia were strong. As well as attending school in Cambridge, she was elected an Associate Fellow of Downing College in 1986 and she became an Honorary Fellow of Girton College in 2000. She had a house in Suffolk and used East Anglia as a setting for a number of her novels. She received an OBE in 1983 and was created a Life Peer in 1991, taking the title Baroness James of Holland Park. She also served as a Governor of the BBC from 1988 to 1993 and was a member of the Arts Council and the British Council. She was an active member of a number of literary societies and learned bodies: in particular she was President of the Society of Authors and a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Literature. She held a number of honorary doctorates and, in addition to her honorary positions in Cambridge, she was an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. P D James continued writing into her nineties. She died in Oxford on 27 November 2014. [These biographical notes are drawn from P D James’ personal papers and from information supplied by her family.]