Subject

Crime writer. Born Ruth Barbara Grasemann in South Woodford. She started work as a feature writer for the Chigwell Times, but was forced to resign after filing a story about a local sports club dinner she hadn't attended, and failed to report that the after-dinner speaker had died midway through his speech. Her best known creation was Chief Inspector Wexford, but she also wrote novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, which explored the psychological backgrounds of criminals. Created Baroness Rendell of Babergh in 1997, she introduced into the Lords the bill that would later become the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.