Photo: Jane Mingay / AP Photo/TT (2005)
Sample of authors
Rendell, Ruth
The British crime writer Ruth Rendell was born in London as Ruth Barbara Graseman. Her mother was of Scandinavian origin and her father a former shipyard worker in Plymouth who was able to train as a technology and mathematics teacher as an adult. Ruth Rendell attended the County High School for Girls in Loughton, Essex. She was a feature writer and deputy editor at a number of local newspapers...
Literary figures
John Stubbs
Gender: Male
British professor of Botany who is worried about becoming dehydrated, so he drinks large quantities of beer. He also solves murders in a highly personal manner in novels by R.T. Campbell (pseudonym for Ruthven Todd). Professor John Stubbs is of late middle age, vain and self-assured, corpulent, has a moustache, smokes a stinking pipe and interrogates witnesses with the sensitivity of a drunken...