Ruth Rendell: A life of crime still paying after 50 years

At 83, Ruth Rendell is still writing a novel a year and is as reluctant to slip into retirement as her long-time hero, former Chief Inspector Wexford, she tells Hannah Stephenson

No Man’s Nightingale

Ruth Rendell

Hutchinson, €14.99;ebook, €21.99

THE HECTIC schedule of Baroness Rendell of Babergh, who is better known as best-selling crime writer, Ruth Rendell, would leave novelists half her age struggling.

The 83-year-old rises at 6am. After breakfast and a work-out, she writes for three hours, before attending the House of Lords four afternoons a week (she’s a Labour life peer) and working for charity (she campaigns against female genital mutilation).

Her busy social life includes the theatre, cinema and opera.

Her fitness regime consists of Pilates classes once or twice a week, a Pilates machine at home, a cross-trainer, and walking. She has given up high- and low-impact aerobics, and eats fish but not meat.

“I’m careful about keeping myself fit and thin, or as thin as I can manage,” she says.

The sprightly octogenarian, who releases one book a year, as Ruth Rendell or Barbara Vine (her other pen-name), has no plans to slow down or retire, as her hero, former Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford (played by the late George Baker in the TV series), has done.

Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of her first Wexford novel, From Doon With Death.

In the last three Wexford books, the inspector has been retired, but still in the loop of investigations, as he tries not to interfere, but offers help. He hasn’t kept up with the times, but still has a great gut instinct.

“He’s not high-tech, but, then, nor am I,” Rendell says, although she is much more au fait with technology than her fictional detective.

Rendell has three iPods, an iPhone, three computers — plus another one in the House of Lords — and a number of memory sticks.

In her 24th Wexford novel, No Man’s Nightingale, Wexford is asked to investigate the murder of a female vicar strangled in the vicarage in Kingsmarkham.

The suspects, twists and red herrings are classic Rendell, but it’s also the genial detective’s relationship with his wife, Dora, that is such a joy to read, how they rub along together in harmony without any hint of slushiness, yet clearly in love.

“I didn’t want to have one of these detectives who leave their wives and go and live in one room somewhere, and sometimes they get back together and sometimes they don’t,” she says.

“I didn’t want to do that with Wexford. I wanted him to have a long and happy marriage. I wanted it to grow.”

The fictional relationship is a far cry from Rendell’s parents, who were constantly warring.

“They were just extremely incompatible, very different kinds of people.

“They didn’t get on. I don’t think either of them knew what they were doing,” she says.

“I think both of them thought that marriage was the be-all and end-all of existence and that it was going to be so romantic and dramatic and wonderful and, of course, it wasn’t, it isn’t. They were bitterly disappointed.”

An only child, Rendell grew up in Essex, but had an unhappy childhood because of the fighting between her parents, who were both teachers.

“To say the arguments made my life a misery would be very strong, but it wasn’t very happy at home,” she says.

Rendell’s marriage to Don Rendell, who died in 1999, also had its ups and downs. The couple divorced in 1975, then reunited and remarried two years later.

It’s an issue she won’t discuss.

They met when she was a reporter at the Chigwell Times and he was her boss.

Their son, Simon, is a psychiatric social worker in Colorado and she has two grown-up grandchildren.

For now, writing is her priority. In her latest book, the murdered vicar is a single woman of mixed race, which opens up all sorts of possibilities for prejudices and racism, ideal material to create a string of suspects.

Rendell hasn’t known many female vicars and isn’t religious, but just wanted the victim to be unusual, she reflects.

“I never was religious, really, but I’m very interested in religion. I call myself an agnostic. I’m open to change. I’m the same sort of person, although much less aggressive, as Richard Dawkins,” she says, referring to the professor and bestselling author of The God Delusion, who recently caused controversy when he wrote on Twitter that all the world’s Muslims had won fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge.

“I’m open to be converted if I can have proof of the existence of God,” she says.

Rendell is an advocate of gay marriage, and was delighted when the British government’s same-sex marriage bill was given assent by the House of Lords in July.

“Gay people have been terribly treated. My last Barbara Vine book was about the relations of gay people in the world and I was delighted to say that we got gay marriage.

“When the bill passed, everybody burst into song, singing ‘I’m Getting Married In The Morning’.”

But she’s fed up that the Lords is becoming increasingly overcrowded.

“At the moment, it’s extremely crowded and when I go back in October it will be worse. It’s getting to the point where you can’t sit down in the chamber if there’s anything people want to attend.”

Are too many people being given peerages?

“Well, it’s all very well to say that, but who would we take them away from? I don’t care for people who are given peerages who have paid for them. I think it happens and I don’t like that. But I’m very pleased that Doreen Lawrence is coming in,” she says.

Rendell no longer writes as many Barbara Vine books, which tend to be darker, psychological thrillers, with more complex subject matter.

She doesn’t read much crime fiction and only has one friend, PD James, in the genre.

“We are very good friends. We do a fundraising event together, where we go on stage and talk to each other for about 40 minutes and then open it up to questions.

“We never rehearse it and it’s sometimes quite funny,” Rendell says.

As for TV crime dramas, she prefers Morse and Lewis to The Killing and other Scandinavian dramas.

“I’ve tried them, but I don’t like them. They don’t do anything for me,” she says.

She’s confident Wexford will return to the screen, but not before the memories of George Baker have faded.

“You have to get to that time when the majority of television viewers only vaguely remember seeing George, but who would be quite prepared to see a new Wexford.

“I don’t think I’ll ever kill him off, because I seem to have managed to find a way of making him there, offering his services and advice, if it’s needed.”

Looking back, she never imagined he’d still be going strong almost half a century on.

“But, then, I don’t think much about the future, which is quite a useful gift. Will I still be here in 10 years’ time? I wouldn’t think so, but I might be — just about, clinging on by the skin of my teeth.”

And still using that cross-trainer, no doubt.

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