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Ruth Rendell
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE (née Grasemann; 17 February 1930 – 2 May 2015) was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.
Rendell is best known for creating Chief Inspector Wexford. A second string of works was a series of unrelated crime novels that explored the psychological background of criminals and their victims. This theme was developed further in a third series of novels, published under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.
Rendell has sold an estimated 20 million copies of her novels.
Rendell was born as Ruth Barbara Grasemann in 1930, in South Woodford, Essex (now Greater London). Her parents were teachers. Her mother, Ebba Kruse, was born in Sweden to Danish parents and brought up in Denmark; her father, Arthur Grasemann, was English. As a result of spending Christmas and other holidays in Scandinavia, Rendell learned Swedish and Danish. Rendell was educated at the County High School for Girls in Loughton, Essex, the town to which the family moved during her childhood. In 2016 a blue plaque was unveiled at her former home, 45 Millsmead Way, Loughton, in recognition of her time living there.
After high school, she became a feature writer for her local Essex paper, the Chigwell Times. She submitted a story narrating a local sports club dinner she had not attended. Because of her absence at the dinner, she did not know that the after-dinner speaker had died midway through the speech, and she failed to report it. She was subsequently forced to resign.
Rendell met her husband Don Rendell (not to be confused with the British saxophonist of the same name) when she was working as a newswriter. They married in 1950, when she was 20, and in 1953 had a son, Simon, now a psychiatrist-social worker who lives in the U.S. state of Colorado. The couple divorced in 1975 but remarried two years later. Don Rendell died in 1999 from prostate cancer.
She made the county of Suffolk her home for many years, using the settings in several of her novels. She lived in the villages of Polstead and later Groton, both east of Sudbury. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1996 Birthday Honours and a life peer as Baroness Rendell of Babergh, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk, on 24 October 1997. She sat in the House of Lords for the Labour Party. In 1998, Rendell was named in a list of the party's biggest private financial donors. She introduced into the Lords the bill that would later become the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (the intent was to prevent the practice).
In August 2014, Rendell was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.
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Ruth Rendell
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE (née Grasemann; 17 February 1930 – 2 May 2015) was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.
Rendell is best known for creating Chief Inspector Wexford. A second string of works was a series of unrelated crime novels that explored the psychological background of criminals and their victims. This theme was developed further in a third series of novels, published under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.
Rendell has sold an estimated 20 million copies of her novels.
Rendell was born as Ruth Barbara Grasemann in 1930, in South Woodford, Essex (now Greater London). Her parents were teachers. Her mother, Ebba Kruse, was born in Sweden to Danish parents and brought up in Denmark; her father, Arthur Grasemann, was English. As a result of spending Christmas and other holidays in Scandinavia, Rendell learned Swedish and Danish. Rendell was educated at the County High School for Girls in Loughton, Essex, the town to which the family moved during her childhood. In 2016 a blue plaque was unveiled at her former home, 45 Millsmead Way, Loughton, in recognition of her time living there.
After high school, she became a feature writer for her local Essex paper, the Chigwell Times. She submitted a story narrating a local sports club dinner she had not attended. Because of her absence at the dinner, she did not know that the after-dinner speaker had died midway through the speech, and she failed to report it. She was subsequently forced to resign.
Rendell met her husband Don Rendell (not to be confused with the British saxophonist of the same name) when she was working as a newswriter. They married in 1950, when she was 20, and in 1953 had a son, Simon, now a psychiatrist-social worker who lives in the U.S. state of Colorado. The couple divorced in 1975 but remarried two years later. Don Rendell died in 1999 from prostate cancer.
She made the county of Suffolk her home for many years, using the settings in several of her novels. She lived in the villages of Polstead and later Groton, both east of Sudbury. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1996 Birthday Honours and a life peer as Baroness Rendell of Babergh, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk, on 24 October 1997. She sat in the House of Lords for the Labour Party. In 1998, Rendell was named in a list of the party's biggest private financial donors. She introduced into the Lords the bill that would later become the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (the intent was to prevent the practice).
In August 2014, Rendell was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.
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