Ada Wells : Picturing Canterbury

Ada Wells was a school teacher, notably at St. Albans. She was the right-hand woman of Kate Sheppard in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union struggle for women to get the vote in parliamentary elections and, later, was the first woman on the Christchurch City Council, 1917-1919.

• Women first voted in the general election, 28 November 1893
• Ada Wells – biography
• Women in the Council Chamber

 

RIP P.D. James

P.D. James,  Baroness James of Holland Park, (OBE, FRSA, FRSL) has died aged 94.

Phyllis Dorothy James was the author of over 20 crime novels, most of them featuring Detective Adam Dalgliesh. She published her (Fragment of an) autobiography Time to be in Earnest in 1999 and many of her works were adapted for television.

Her most recent book was Death Comes to Pemberley (2011) a continuation of the events in Pride and Prejudice framed as a murder-mystery. It was one of those ideas that intrigued almost everyone and was made into a successful mini-series in 2013.

My favourite PD James title is The Maul and the Pear Tree (1971). Co-written with T.A. Critchley, it is a non-fiction examination of The Ratcliffe Highway Murders of 1811.

     

• Search our catalogue for books by P.D. James
• Browse Literature Resource Centre for overviews of her work, reviews and critical essays.
• Read The BBC’s Obituary of P.D. James