I was given this for my birthday by my partner's parents. I went to hear P.D James talk just over 10 years ago and found her fascinating and measured.

Her memoir is just as fascinating. This is a diary she keeps for a year from her 77th birthday
(3rd August 1997). Alongside her fairly regular entries, she goes in to her background and shares plenty of interesting anecdotes from old crimes to politics and literature. Much of what she shares about that time brought me back to me childhood in the 1990s and I loved reading about her background being born between the two World Wars and how much she coped with in her family life.

An excellent memoir which is well written and has given me even more admiration for P.D James. I now need to read more of her novels!

The book is gracefully and lucidly written, as one would expect. She is an opinionated person and I wish there wasn't quite so much about British politics, or so much name-dropping. Her energy in the chronicled year is impressive. One could wish that she had opened up more about her tragedies and regrets, including her very difficult marriage, but she is a reserved and very stiff-upper-lip person and what she presents in this fragment of memoir is carefully edited. The parts of the book I found most interesting were those in which she writes about books, poetry and what it's like to be on the best-seller reading circuit, and her memories of World War II. If you are a fan and close reader of her fiction (as I am) you won't be surprised by anything you learn about Ms. James. This is the opposite of a tell-all.

Meh. She didn't need the money. She did a lot of name-dropping, and 'this is how wonderful my life as a successful author has made me and how popular I am' rather than reflections. She comes across to me as in insufferable snob, particularly about the fees for libraries. Now that she has money enough to buy any book she wants, she doesn't see it as a particular hardship for others to have to pay, although she does feel slightly badly about it. Bah.

I liked her better when she was catty about Agatha Christie. She at least showed some humor, which is sadly lacking here. Maybe its too soon to read quite so much of her personal writing. I just finished the book on writing detective fiction. Parts of this are identical to that. lol Don't throw out the good stuff. She must be bored to death having to say the same crap about writing over and over again. It seems that she never gets enough of speaking, though. It can't take any effort after all the times she Dows it in a month, let alone a year, to say nothing of how many years.

She actually has become one of the characters in an Agatha Christie story that she so deplores.

This was disappointing. It is basically excerpts from a diary, which is less than riveting. It offers virtually no insights into the author's character, personality or life. It's almost as if she became tired of people hounding her to learn what she was like, and so turned out something interminably boring to get them off her back. Stick to her fiction, would be my advice.

I've never read a P.D. James book prior to this one. Her year of autobiography was very moving, especially in the first major portion of this work, as she reflected upon her deeper truths. As the book continued, the last third was more a recounting of activities with less and less earnestness and inwardness.

If you are a P.D. James fan, don't miss out on this lovely autobiography. Written in diary format over the year she turned 77, it is a brilliant look at not just the author, but the amazing person. As she would talk about a book she had written, I would glance at my shelf and there it was, begging to be re-read. And so I am- some, if not all. This woman's energy is incredible. How I would have loved to hear her in person. I have long loved her books, now I love the author.

Although this record is for the paperback edition, I read this book on Kobo. An interesting read - one year in the life of P.D. James, her 78th, written in 1997-98. I am amazed at the pace of visiting and speaking engagements she maintained in her 78th year, as well as finishing one novel and writing the memoir, which she calls "a fragment of a biography." I like the idea of keep a diary/memoir in detail for just one year, rather than the commitment to an ongoing narrative. I am thinking of doing this for 2021.

P.D. James chronicles a breathtakingly busy life as one of Britain’s grand dames of literature. She weaves in reflections on her past, the art of the murder mystery and modern culture. In less artful hands, the account might turn discursive and jumbled. Not in hers.

I loved this book even though I've never read PD James. Now I have to because this woman is that wonderful combination of smart, funny, and self-effacing. And I got a TON of titles of books by others to investigate as well.

A very busy lady. A product of her middle class upbringing and her time.

I enjoyed reading this "behind the scenes" peek into an author's life, what goes on that inspires the mysteries, what other authors influenced P. D. James, and what led to any of her books to be televised. I took awhile to read this, but not because of how it was written. It was because I wanted to stop and look up the other authors mentioned and read about those various books.

3.5 stars. I'm not a big detective/mystery fan; I've read a couple of hers and have Children of Men in the queue (which is regarded as her best while not being a mystery) but I did enjoy hearing about her travels and her writing philosophy. I would have liked to have heard more about the mental illness of her mother and her husband.