Edwards, Ruth Dudley 1944–

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Edwards, Ruth Dudley 1944–

PERSONAL:

Born May 24, 1944, in Dublin, Ireland; daughter of Robert (a professor) and Sheila (a teacher) Dudley Edwards; married Patrick Cosgrave (a writer), July 31, 1965 (divorced, 1975); married John Mattock (a teacher), January 10, 1976 (divorced, 1991). Education: University College, Dublin, Ireland, B.A., 1964, M.A., 1968, D.Litt, 1990; attended Girton College and Wolfson College, Cambridge, 1968-70, and City of London Polytechnic, diploma in business studies. Politics: "Floating voter with a libertarian bias." Hobbies and other interests: Friends, current affairs, detective stories, cricket, Fred Astaire movies.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—London, England. Agent—Robinson Literary Agency, Flat A511, The Jam Factory, 27 Green Walk, London, England, SE1 4TT; Jane Conway-Gordon, 1 Old Compton Street, London W1D 5JA, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University College, Dublin, Ireland, tutor in history, 1964-65; Young Street Further Education Center, Cambridge, England, lecturer in English and history, 1965-67; British Post Office, London, England, marketing executive, 1970-74; British Department of Industry, London, principal, 1975-79; Economist, company historian, 1982-2000; freelance writer and broadcaster, 1979—.

MEMBER:

British-Irish Association (member of executive committee, 1981-93), Crime Writers Association (member of executive committee, 1995-98), Society of Authors (member of executive committee, 1996-99), British Association for Irish Studies (chair, 1986-93), PEN, Detection Club.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Irish Historical Research Prize, National University of Ireland, 1977, for Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure; James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Best Biography, 1988, for Victor Gollancz: A Life; D.Litt., University College.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

An Atlas of Irish History, Methuen (London, England), 1973, 3rd edition, with Bridget Hourican, Routledge (London, England), 2005.

Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure, Gollancz (London, England), 1977, Taplinger (New York, NY), 1978, new edition, Irish Academic Press (Ireland), 2006.

James Connolly, Gill & Macmillan (Dublin, Ireland), 1981.

Harold Macmillan: A Life in Pictures, MacMillan London (London, England), 1983.

Victor Gollancz: A Biography, Gollancz (London, England), 1987.

(Editor and author of introduction) The Best of Bagehot, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1993.

The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist, 1843-1993, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1993.

True Brits: Inside the Foreign Office, BBC Books (London, England), 1994.

The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions, HarperCollins (London, England), 1999.

Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King, and the Glory Days of Fleet Street, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 2003.

Contributor to books, including Dictionary of Business Biography, 1984; The Troubled Face of Biography, edited by Eric Homberger and John Charmley, 1988; A Legacy of Scots, edited by Charles Walker, 1988; Leading Lives: Irish Women in Britain, by Rita Wall; Dublin, 1904-1924, edited by Patrick Rafroidi, Pierre Joannon, and Maurice Goldring, 1991; Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons, 1993; History and the Public Sphere: Essays in Honour of John A. Murphy, edited by Tom Dunne and Lawrence M. Geary, 2005; Dictionary of National Biography, 2005; and Britain and Ireland: Lives Entwined II, British Council, 2006. Contributor to periodicals, including the Economist, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Irish Times, Sunday Independent, and Belfast Telegraph.

CRIME FICTION

Corridors of Death, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1982, reprinted, Poisoned Pen Press (Scottsdale, AZ), 2007.

The St. Valentine's Day Murders, Quartet, 1982, published as The Saint Valentine's Day Murders, Poisoned Pen Press (Scottsdale, AZ), 2007.

The English School of Murder, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1990.

Clubbed to Death, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1992.

Matricide at St. Martha's, Thorndike (Waterville, ME), 1995.

Ten Lords A-Leaping, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1996.

Murder in a Cathedral, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1997.

Publish and Be Murdered, Poisoned Pen Press (Scottsdale, AZ), 1999.

The Anglo-Irish Murders, Thorndike Press (Waterville, ME), 2001.

Carnage on the Committee, Poisoned Pen Press (Scottsdale, AZ), 2004.

Murdering Americans, Poisoned Pen Press (Scottsdale, AZ), 2007.

Contributor of short stories to anthologies, including The Oxford Book of Detective Stories, 2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ruth Dudley Edwards once told CA: "In both my biographies and detective stories, I am primarily interested in exploring the development of personality and the motivation that leads the individual to take private or public action. I strive for objectivity in my historical writing. My only message is that none of us is without flaws."

Edwards's first book, An Atlas of Irish History, outlines the history of Ireland over a two-thousand-year period. In addition to discussing Ireland's political, economic, and military history, the book explores its religious history and the various social changes the country has undergone over the years. The third edition, published in 2005 with Bridget Hourican, includes more than one-hundred charts, graphs, and maps. Edwards' next book, Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure, which is about the Irish patriot, won a prize for historical research. More recently, the author returned to the subject of Ireland in The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions, which focuses on Northern Ireland politics and provides "a fair, balanced description of all that the Orange Order, the Royal Black Preceptories and the Apprentice Boys stand for, how they came into being and what are their basic aims and principles," according to Contemporary Review contributor Robert S. Redmond.

True Brits: Inside the Foreign Office details a portrait of British Foreign Office and is an offshoot of a British Broadcasting Corporation television series. "If there is a longueur in her book it is her pleas for diplomats to be treated kindly by the public," noted a contributor to the London Economist. In The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist, 1843-1993 Edwards, who spent nearly two decades as the magazine's historian, combines the history of the magazine with a history of Great Britain. "Edwards has expertly and lucidly voyaged through oceans of words to provide an entrancing account of British politics and economics, as seen through the glass of enlightened intellectual liberalism," asserted Management Today contributor Robert Heller. Writing in Business History, Christine Shaw noted that the author "has a lively style, and an eye for a good quotation. Her subject provides a rich haul of quotable material."

Publishing is also the topic for Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King, and the Glory Days of Fleet Street, which chronicles the newspaper empire of Great Britain's Harmsworth family. It focuses particularly on how Cecil Harmsworth King and editor Hugh Cudlipp made the Daily Mirror and other sister newspapers among the most influential papers published in Great Britain. Donna Marie Smith, writing in Library Journal, called the book "a colorful and fascinating portrait of the newspaper world of early 1900s Britain."

Moving from fact to fiction, Edwards has written satirical detective books featuring a British civil servant. Her first, Corridors of Death, was published in 1982 and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association's Best First Novel award. Her crime novel Matricide at St. Martha's features civil servant and part-time detective Robert Amiss, who is on a fellowship at St. Martha's Women's College. Before long, Robert is involved in the school's political intrigue when the presiding Mistress is murdered. The police are baffled, and it is up to Robert to solve the crime. A Publishers Weekly contributor called the novel an "acidly witty send-up of feminists, dumb cops and all matters politically correct."

Amiss returns in Ten Lords A-Leaping. Here, the author takes readers through the lives of the Lords of Parliament as Robert finds himself defending the right for the English upper-crust to conduct fox hunts. When several of the Lords turn up dead, he sets out to solve the murders; animal rights activists are the main suspects. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the author "ably skewers fox-hunters and anti-fox hunters alike, as well as a slew of other targets in this farcical and appealing mystery." Murder in a Cathedral finds Robert investigating the supposed suicide of a choir master, following the installation of a new bishop at Westonbury Cathedral. And Publish and Be Murdered, in which Robert accepts an assignment to manage a right-wing political journal with a hated editor, was called a "witty romp" by Jenny McLarin in Booklist.

Murdering Americans features Baroness "Jack" Troutbeck and her squawking parrot. When she becomes a professor at Freeman State University, Jack hires a private investigator to uncover the unethical conduct of the school's provost and others. The investigator is killed in a fake accident, and the baroness calls in Robert Amiss to help her solve the case. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the author "wittily satirizes political correctness in this fast-paced academic romp." A Kirkus Reviews critic similarly felt that Edwards "pens a scathing, often amusing attack on over-the-top PC."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1999, Jenny McLarin, review of Publish and Be Murdered, p. 1291; March 1, 2007, David Pitt, review of Murdering Americans, p. 67.

Business History, July, 1996, Christine Shaw, review of The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist, 1843-1993, p. 157.

Columbia Journalism Review, January-February, 2005, James Boylan, review of Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King, and the Glory Days of Fleet Street, p. 62.

Contemporary Review, November, 1999, Robert S. Redmond, review of The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions, p. 265; October, 2003, George Evans, "Cudlipp and King: Tyrants of Fleet Street," p. 246.

Economist, February 20, 1982, review of Corridors of Death, p. 93; December 16, 1983, review of Harold Macmillian: A Life in Pictures, p. 89; May 14, 1994, review of True Brits: Inside the Foreign Office, p. 134; May 14, 1994, review of True Brits, p. 94; July 10, 1999, George Boyce, review of The Faithful Tribe, p. 107; December 4, 1999, review of The Faithful Tribe, p. 3.

History Today, January, 1984, review of Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure, p. 30; April, 1987, Bernard Crick, review of Victor Gollancz: A Biography, p. 52.

Journal of Economic History, March, 1997, Hugh Rockoff, review of The Pursuit of Reason, p. 222.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2007, review of Murdering Americans, p. 52.

Library Journal, April 1, 1982, review of Corridors of Death, p. 748; September 1, 1992, Rex E. Klett, review of Clubbed to Death, p. 219; July, 1996, Rex E. Klett, review of Ten Lords A-Leaping, p. 167; June 1, 1997, Rex E. Klett, review of Murder in a Cathedral, p. 156; November 1, 2004, Donna Marie Smith, review of Newspapermen, p. 98.

Management Today, December, 1993, Robert Heller, review of The Pursuit of Reason, p. 86.

National Review, December 23, 1996, review of Ten Lords A-Leaping, p. 57.

New Republic, September 5, 1988, Samuel Sifton, review of Victor Gollancz, p. 40.

New Statesman, February 20, 1987, Robin Blackburn, review of Victor Gollancz, p. 29; June 28, 1999, Lisa Jardine, review of The Faithful Tribe, p. 47.

New Statesman & Society, September 17, 1993, review of The Pursuit of Reason, p. 41.

New York Times, September 12, 1982, Newgate Callendar, review of Corridors of Death, p. 38; December 5, 1982, review of Corridors of Death, p. 22; September 29, 1985, Newgate Callendar, review of The Saint Valentine's Day Murders, p. 21.

New York Times Book Review, September 12, 1982, Newgate Callendar, review of Corridors of Death, p. 38; December 5, 1982, review of Corridors of Death, p. 22; September 29, 1985, Newgate Callendar, review of The Saint Valentine's Day Murders, p. 21; December 27, 1987, Helen Benedict, review of Victor Gollancz, p. 19.

Publishers Weekly, March 26, 1982, review of Corridors of Death, p. 69; June 7, 1985, review of The Saint Valentine's Day Murders, p. 77; August 3, 1992, review of Clubbed to Death, p. 63; March 27, 1995, review of Matricide at St. Martha's, p. 78; May 27, 1996, review of Ten Lords A-Leaping, p. 68; May 26, 1997, review of Murder in a Cathedral, p. 70; February 22, 1999, review of Publish and Be Murdered, p. 69; October 25, 2004, review of Carnage on the Committee, p. 31; January 22, 2007, review of Murdering Americans, p. 164.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2006, review of An Atlas of Irish History; August, 2006, review of Patrick Pearse.

Spectator, September 4, 1993, Mark Archer, review of The Pursuit of Reason, p. 27; June 19, 1999, C.D.C. Armstrong, review of The Faithful Tribe, p. 39; November 25, 2000, review of The Anglo-Irish Murders, p. 58.

Times Literary Supplement, June 1, 1990, Patricia Craig, review of The English School of Murder, p. 593; September 25, 1992, Patricia Craig, review of Clubbed to Death, p. 26; December 17, 1993, John Turner, review of The Best of Bagehot, p. 6; December 17, 1993, John Turner, review of The Pursuit of Reason, p. 6; December 2, 1994, Patricia Craig, review of Matricide at St. Martha's, p. 23; February 28, 1997, review of Murder in a Cathedral, p. 23; October 23, 1998, review of Publish and Be Murdered, p. 25; July 16, 1999, Keith Jeffery, review of The Faithful Tribe, p. 11; July 11, 2003, Michael Davie, "What Readers Want," review of Newspapermen, p. 27.

Wall Street Journal, June 6, 1995, Matthew Rees, review of The Pursuit of Reason, p. W16.