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James, P. D.

articles by, [12] 14; [26] 12; Time to Be in Earnest, [52] 69

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20061201145816

The Judge’s Progress

P. D. James on Cyril Hare, Tragedy at Law

Cyril Hare is the pseudonym of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, who was born in 1900 and died in 1958. He was a barrister who became a county court judge and took his writing name from his London home, Cyril Mansions in Battersea, and his chambers in the Temple, Hare Court. His great strength is the use he made of his expert knowledge, both as barrister and judge. Tragedy at Law, published in 1942, was his favourite novel and introduced his hero, Francis Pettigrew, an ageing and very able barrister but one who has never fulfilled his early promise. Pettigrew is aided in his detection – or is it perhaps the other way round? – by a professional police officer, Inspector John Mallett of Scotland Yard, who had appeared in previous detective stories by Hare.
20161201160424 Maggie Fergusson on P. D. James, Time to be in Ernest

The Threads of Memory

Maggie Fergusson on P. D. James, Time to Be in Earnest

I remember her most vividly gliding down from the first floor of her Holland Park house on a Stannah stairlift. Generally speaking these contraptions suggest dénouement and decline. Not with P. D. James. She reached the hall with an expression of keen anticipation and great good humour – especially if I had come to chauffeur her to an evening engagement. Being driven around London at night, she used to say, was one of the great delights of her old age.

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