Ruth Dudley Edwards is a journalist, historian and prize-winning biographer (the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Victor Gollancz: a biography).Her non-fiction books include True Brits: inside the Foreign Office, The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist 1843-1993, The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions, and Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King and the glory days of Fleet Street.
In America, she may be better known for her crime novels. The latest, Murdering Americans, is set in the academic world of Indiana. It won the 2008 Last Laugh Award, awarded at Crimefest.
Last week I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:
I'm spending most of my days in court in Belfast or Dublin covering the civil case against the Omagh bombers - about which I'm writing a book. Terrorism is these days my main interest, so I'm reading Michael Burleigh's chilling but very lively Blood and Rage: a cultural history of terrorism.Visit Ruth Dudley Edwards' website.
By way of light relief, I have Donna Moore's hilarious send-up of every cliche in the crime-writing canon, Go to Helena Handbasket, which makes me laugh out loud. It deserves to become a classic.
--Marshal Zeringue
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