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1931-
Novelist. Caroline Graham was born 1931 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Her mother died when she was six and she was brought up by her father, a brickyard labourer, who married again when she was 13. She won a scholarship to Nuneaton High School for Girls but her working class background made her schooldays less than happy. Home life was also strained and she left school as soon as she could, aged 14, for a job in Cortauld's factory in Nuneaton. She worked in other factories and shops until, at the age of 17, she joined the Royal Navy but within three years she had left to get married.
At this time, she had the idea of becoming an actress and went to drama school. Work on the stage followed around the country but on the birth of her son, in 1971, she turned to writing. In the first instance these were short stories that did not get published but journalism proved more profitable and she wrote for radio and television, including scripting episodes for the long-running television series Crossroads, set in a Birmingham motel. An Open University course on the novel in the nineteenth century led her to embark on writing her own full-length novels. Fire dance, a romance, was her first novel to be published in 1982, and this was followed two years later by The envy of the stranger. Caroline Graham also wrote two books for children, latching on to the craze for BMX bikes. Her first big success, however, came in 1997 with The killings at Badger's Drift, a crime story set in a quiet English village. It was to be the first in a series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby and Sergeant Troy, later adapted for television as the hugely popular Midsomer murders series, starring John Nettles. The killings at Badger's Drift was subsequently selected by the Crime Writers Association as one of the hundred best crime novels of all time.
Caroline Graham has lived in Suffolk since 1975.
Fire dance (1982)
The envy of the stranger (1984)
BMX star rider (1985)
BMX'ers battle it out (1985)
The killings at Badger's Drift (1987)*
Death of a hollow man (1989)*
Murder at Madingley Grange (1990)
Death in disguise (1992)*
Written in blood (1994)*
Faithful unto death (1996)*
A place of safety (1999)*
A ghost in the machine (2004)*
Titles marked with and asterisk (*) feature Chief Inspector Barnaby.
An article, Writers in waiting, by Tom Miller, appeared in the Saga Magazine for October 2004, and features an interview with Caroline Graham.
There is a page on Caroline Graham on the contemporary writers site produced by the Film and Literature Department of the British Council in association with Booktrust at http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/
There is a guide to all the television episodes of Midsomer Murders at http://epguides.com/MidsomerMurders/guide.shtml
Page created 9 December 2004 and last
updated 9 December 2004
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