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Ruth Rendell

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Ruth Rendell was born in London in 1930 and was educated at Loughton County High School in Essex.

She is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has received many awards for her work, including the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger (lifetime achievement award), and The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence.

With more than fifty novels to her name (and her pen-name Barbara Vine), her most famous literary creation is Detective Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, whose investigations are centred around the fictional English town of Kingsmarkham. The first Wexford outing, From Doon with Death, was also her first novel and was published in 1964.

In 1987 her second Wexford novel, Wolf to the Slaughter, was the first to be adapted for the small screen by ITV. A further 22 Kingsmarkham investigations have since been broadcast.

Along with her friend PD James she can be credited with expanding the crime thriller genre with her psychological novels, which turned the whodunit into the whydunit. But where some authors have examined violent crime in gut-churning detail, Ruth’s work has eschewed gore, focusing instead on the details of mental derangement. Her characters often live on the margins of society and sanity.

Throughout her forty year career, she’s embraced social change in her work, addressing issues such as domestic violence and the changing status of women.

Ruth was awarded a CBE in 1996. A Life Peerage was conferred on her in 1997 as Baroness Rendell of Babergh.