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Survival Kit

Sunday, January 04, 2004
  • Mystery writer P.D. James
    Mystery writer P.D. James

    P.D. James

    P.D. James has set her intricately plotted mysteries in a variety of unusual locations: Death In Holy Orders took place at a theological college in a remote part of East Anglia, Devices and Desires at a nuclear power station on the Norfolk coast, Original Sin in a publishing house on the Thames, The Murder Room in a private museum near Hampstead Heath. But as far as I know Baroness James has never sent her hero, Commander Adam Dalgleish, to the Montana woods on a case. Let’s find out what she’d need for such a trip by looking into her survival kit.

Her List:

1. The omnibus edition of all the novels of Jane Austen
2. Film: Some Like it Hot
3. Books and cassettes to enable me to speak good French at the end of the six months
4. A copious supply of lined A4 writing pads and two dozen black ballpoint pens
5. Large jars of cleansing and moisturising cream and a large bottle of Chanel’s No.5 perfume
6. A dozen very large balls of coloured wool and knitting needles
7. CD of St Matthew’s Passion by Bach
8. CD of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, with the young John Gielgud as Hamlet