A life of crime: Tributes to writer PD James

Crime writer P.D. James, who has died aged 94

The novelist, who spent more than half a century charting the career of her poetry-loving policeman Adam Dalgliesh, spent 30 years working as a civil servant, before becoming a full-time writer.

She only published her first novel, Cover Her Face, in 1962 at the age of 42, but her books have since sold in their millions around the world.

Along the way, the Mystery Writers of America gave her a Grand Master Award, the BBC made her a governor and John Major sent her to the House of Lords as Baroness James of Holland Park.

In a 1995 interview with The Paris Review, she said she was “born knowing” she wanted to be a writer and “had an interest in death from an early age”.

She said: “When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?”

Among her recent work was a new novel updating Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice. Death Comes To Pemberley pitched Austen’s characters, Mr Darcy and his wife Elizabeth, into the middle of a murder mystery, and was later filmed by the BBC.

A former governor of the BBC, James famously confronted its then director-general Mark Thompson during an edition of the Radio 4 Today programme about the excessive pay packets given to some of its top executives.

She grilled him as she took the helm as guest editor of the show, telling him it was “really quite extraordinary” that 37 BBC bosses earned more than the Prime Minister.

Yesterday David Cameron said he was saddened to her of the death of “one of the UK’s greatest crime writers, who thrilled and inspired generations of readers.”

Her publishers Faber & Faber said: “It is difficult to express our profound sadness at losing P D James, one of the world’s great writers and a Faber author since her first publication in 1962.

“She was so very remarkable in every aspect of her life, an inspiration and great friend to us all.”

Baroness Stowell, Leader of the Lords, said: “In addition to being an acclaimed novelist who brought so much pleasure to so many through her writing, PD James also made a great contribution to public life as a civil servant, a BBC Governor and as a peer of the realm. Her contributions in the chamber were characteristically modest and considered, and we shall all miss her greatly.”