P. D. James. Time to be in Earnest (1999)

     P. D. James. Time to be in Earnest (1999) A fragment of autobiography, and a pretty good fragment. James begins a diary in 1997 when she turns 70. This book consists of edited and recomposed  entries, many of them mini-essays on topics that interest her and that she know will interest her fans (I'm one).
     She is carefully reticent about her feelings, but not so much about her opinions, in which she displays a classic conservative cast of mind. She likes an orderly society, but doesn’t like injustice. She doesn’t like capital punishment, but thinks it deters murder. She thinks people should earn their way in life, but she also knows that many people are constrained by circumstances over which they have no control, and believes it is the community’s duty to help them. She’s well aware of how  great a role luck played in her own life: there was no guarantee that her first novel would be published, nor that it would be a success.
     Much of her time in 1997-98 was spent promoting A Certain Justice in book tours, and much of the rest in speaking engagements. She likes good conversation, and remarks often on what she and her table companions discussed. Occasionally she discusses the crime novel; she notes that forensics and police procedure are much more carefully described and followed than in earlier times. Jane Austen is her favourite author; she includes a talk she gave about Emma as a mystery novel.
     She loves her family and treasures her friends, and  can find pleasure and joy in landscape and weather and visits. If she converses as she writes she would be a delightful table companion. The last paragraph is worth quoting:
 The cells in my body must have renewed themselves countless times since that eleven-year-old walked round Ludlow Castle so carefully the letter which opened for her the delights and opportunities of a high school education. I inhabit a different body, but I can reach back over seventy years and recognise her as myself. Then I walked in hope – and I do so still. ***