James was born in
Oxford, the daughter of Sidney Victor James, a tax inspector, and his wife, Dorothy Mary James. She was educated at the
British School in
Ludlow and
Cambridge High School for Girls. Her mother was committed to a mental hospital when James was in her mid-teens. She had to leave school at the age of sixteen to work to take care of her younger siblings, sister Monica, and brother Edward, because her family did not have much money. She worked in a tax office in Ely for three years and later found a job as an
assistant stage manager for the Festival Theatre in Cambridge. She married Ernest Connor Bantry White (called "Connor"), an army doctor, on 8 August 1941. Connor White returned from the
Second World War mentally ill and was institutionalised. With her daughters being mostly cared for by Connor's parents, James studied hospital administration, and from 1949 to 1968 worked for a hospital board in London. She began writing in the mid-1950s, using her maiden name ("My genes are James genes"). Her first novel,
Cover Her Face, featuring the investigator and poet
Adam Dalgliesh of
New Scotland Yard, was published in 1962. Dalgliesh's last name comes from a teacher of English at Cambridge High School and his first name is that of Miss Dalgliesh's father. Many of James's mystery novels take place against the backdrop of UK bureaucracies, such as the criminal justice system and the
National Health Service, in which she worked for decades starting in the 1940s. Two years after the publication of
Cover Her Face, James's husband died on 5 August 1964. Prior to his death, James had not felt able to change her job: "He [Connor] would periodically discharge himself from hospital, sometimes at very short notice, and I never knew quite what I would have to face when I returned home from the office. It was not a propitious time to look for promotion or for a new job, which would only impose additional strain. But now [after Connor's death] I felt the strong need to look for a change of direction." She applied for the grade of Principal in the Home Civil Service She sat in the
House of Lords as a
Conservative. She was an
Anglican and a lay patron of the
Prayer Book Society. Her 2001 work,
Death in Holy Orders, displays her familiarity with the inner workings of church hierarchy. Her later novels were often set in a community closed in some way, such as a publishing house, barristers' chambers, a theological college, an island or a private clinic.
Talking About Detective Fiction was published in 2009. Over her writing career, James also wrote many essays and short stories for
periodicals and
anthologies, which have yet to be collected. She said in 2011 that
The Private Patient was the final Dalgliesh novel. However, at the time of her death, she had been planning another Dalgliesh novel, set in Southwold. In 2008, she was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame at the inaugural
ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards. In August 2014, James was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to
The Guardian opposing
Scottish independence in the run-up to September's
referendum on that issue. James' main home was her house at 58
Holland Park Avenue, in the area from which she took her title; she also owned homes in Oxford and Southwold. She is survived by her two daughters, Clare and Jane, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. == Film and television ==