Jill Paton Walsh (1937–2020)
Author of Thrones, Dominations
About the Author
Jill Paton Walsh was born Gillian Bliss on April 29, 1937 in London. She graduated from St. Anne's College in Oxford. She taught at the Enfield Girls' Grammar School for three years and was a permanent visiting faculty member for the Center for Children's Literature at Simmons College in Boston, show more Massachusetts. She was also an adjunct British board member of Children's Literature New England. She has written more than 15 books for children. She has won numerous awards including the Book World Festival Award for Fireweed in 1970, the Whitbread Prize for The Emperor's Winding Sheet in1974, the Universe Prize for A Parcel of Patterns in 1984, and the Smarties Grand Prix for Gaffer Samson's Luck in 1984. She has also written adult novels, including completing an unfinished Dorothy Sayers manuscript. Her adult works include Knowledge of Angels, The Serpentine Cave, and A School for Lovers. She is the author of the Imogen Quy Mystery series and the Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery series. She was elected as fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1996. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Jill Paton Walsh
Associated Works
Great Spirits 1000-2000: The Fifty-Two Christians Who Most Influenced Their Millennium (2002) — Contributor — 30 copies, 1 review
Cricket Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 8, April 1981 — Contributor — 3 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Walsh, Jill Paton
- Legal name
- Paton Walsh, Gillian
- Other names
- Bliss, Gillian Honorine Mary (birth name)
Herbert, Gillian Honorine Mary (Baroness Hemingford) - Birthdate
- 1937-04-29
- Date of death
- 2020-10-18
- Gender
- female
- Education
- St. Michael's Convent, North Finchley
St. Anne's College, Oxford - Occupations
- author
teacher - Organizations
- Simmons College
- Awards and honors
- Order of the British Empire (Commander ∙ 1996)
Royal Society of Literature (Fellow) - Relationships
- Townsend, John Rowe (husband)
Paton Walsh, Anthony (former husband)
Bliss, Christopher (brother)
Herbert, Nicholas (3rd Baron Hemingford, husband) - Short biography
- Born Gillian Bliss in London on 25 April 1937. Educated at St. Michael's Convent, North Finchley, and at St. Anne's College, Oxford. In 1961 she married Anthony Paton Walsh, who died in 2003. In 2004 she married writer John Rowe Townsend, who died in 2014. Her books included fiction for children and teenagers, crime fiction (including additional books about Dorothy L Sayers' character Lord Peter Wimsey) and other novels. She was a 'permanent visiting faculty member' of the Centre for Children's Literature, Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts from 1978 to 1986. In 1996 she received the CBE for services to literature, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She died in October 2020.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- North Finchley, London, Middlesex, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Richmond, Surrey, England, UK
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
Boston, Massachusetts, USA - Place of death
- Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Discussions
Found: YA - Earth dying, girl on spaceship to settle new planet in Name that Book (October 2023)
Found: 1970s Book about Homeless Children in London Blitz in Name that Book (April 2021)
Children's book, journey to new planet, butterfly-like aliens in Name that Book (October 2011)
Reviews
The Late Scholar: Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane Investigate (Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane) by Jill Paton Walsh
After her first solo Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane novel, The Attenbury Emeralds, a most lackluster book, Jill Paton Walsh redeems herself with The Late Scholar. Is it the return to Oxford, evocative of Gaudy Night? Is it the happy couple working hand-in-glove as they did in Have His Carcase and Busman's Honeymoon? Is it a surer hand with her sophomore effort? Never mind which, readers will enjoy The Late Scholar, which rises to the standard of some of the best mysteries penned by Dorothy L. show more Sayers herself.
Unbeknownst to Lord Peter (as we must continue calling him, despite his much-resented elevation to Duke of Denver), the dukedom comes with yet another unwanted duty: intervening in the affairs of the fictional Oxford college of St. Severin’s as the Visitor, a sort of titled arbiter. He has been summoned because the fellows of St. Severin’s have erupted in heated discord over the proposed sale of a seventh century manuscript in order to finance land speculation at the fringes of Oxford. The vellum manuscript was of The Consolations of Philosophy by the saint for whom St. Severin’s is named, Manlius Severinus Boethius, and possibly glossed in the West Saxon language by King Alfred the Great himself, meaning the book could be worth as much as £500,000. But Lord Peter thinks that the quarreling dons are the least of St. Severin’s College troubles: He begins to suspect that there have been murders and attempted murders —disguised as accidents. With Harriet’s help, Lord Peter tries to discover the killer(s) and what’s really at the heart of St. Severin’s feuding factions. Recommended as a most excellent come-back. show less
Unbeknownst to Lord Peter (as we must continue calling him, despite his much-resented elevation to Duke of Denver), the dukedom comes with yet another unwanted duty: intervening in the affairs of the fictional Oxford college of St. Severin’s as the Visitor, a sort of titled arbiter. He has been summoned because the fellows of St. Severin’s have erupted in heated discord over the proposed sale of a seventh century manuscript in order to finance land speculation at the fringes of Oxford. The vellum manuscript was of The Consolations of Philosophy by the saint for whom St. Severin’s is named, Manlius Severinus Boethius, and possibly glossed in the West Saxon language by King Alfred the Great himself, meaning the book could be worth as much as £500,000. But Lord Peter thinks that the quarreling dons are the least of St. Severin’s College troubles: He begins to suspect that there have been murders and attempted murders —disguised as accidents. With Harriet’s help, Lord Peter tries to discover the killer(s) and what’s really at the heart of St. Severin’s feuding factions. Recommended as a most excellent come-back. show less
The Attenbury Emeralds: The New Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane Mystery (Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane Mysteries) by Jill Paton Walsh
The strongest praise I can give this novel is that I found it a pleasurable page-turner. Walsh gets the period details just right and does a good job capturing some of the nuance of Sayers' characters, as well as the cultural shifts taking place in post-war Britain.
AND YET THE PLOT. The Attenbury Emeralds is lively and dramatic, but plotted more like an episode of Sherlock than a Golden Age detective story, with a mystery held together by coincidence and fuzzy thinking. While Sayers was not show more above the odd coincidence (Peter Wimsey is, after all, a Mystery Magnet), she is known for intellectual rigor. We just don't get that complexity in these fan sequels.
Don't get me wrong, the next time I'm in need of a cozy read I will certainly consider picking up another of these books, but the weak plotting means I find them simultaneously enjoyable and frustrating.
ETA: While I'm referencing TV Tropes, I forgot to complain about Walsh's hat tip to the Celebrity Paradox - it's silly, but it really bothered me! A world where Dorothy L. Sayers existed and wrote detective novels that aren't about Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane is a world I'd rather not contemplate. show less
AND YET THE PLOT. The Attenbury Emeralds is lively and dramatic, but plotted more like an episode of Sherlock than a Golden Age detective story, with a mystery held together by coincidence and fuzzy thinking. While Sayers was not show more above the odd coincidence (Peter Wimsey is, after all, a Mystery Magnet), she is known for intellectual rigor. We just don't get that complexity in these fan sequels.
Don't get me wrong, the next time I'm in need of a cozy read I will certainly consider picking up another of these books, but the weak plotting means I find them simultaneously enjoyable and frustrating.
ETA: While I'm referencing TV Tropes, I forgot to complain about Walsh's hat tip to the Celebrity Paradox - it's silly, but it really bothered me! A world where Dorothy L. Sayers existed and wrote detective novels that aren't about Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane is a world I'd rather not contemplate. show less
A child who is singled out by his mother for abuse, called nothing but Creep, has only his older brother to help him and sneak food for him until redevelopment next door damages the wall of their tenement flat and breaches the closet he's locked in. He leaves the house, makes his way across the broken bricks of the construction site to the old canal. And finds himself in the days of the Industrial Revolution. Life is not much easier for him, and abuse of children is rife, but the world is show more wider and he begins to make his own way. Meanwhile, back in 20th century England, his brother is trying desperately to find him.
There's an unforgettable episode in which the brother, clearly a child of the working class, asks the history teacher at one of the posh schools for help in his research. (He's come to recognize, or half-believe at least, that "Creep" is somewhen in the past.) The teacher is dismissive at first and then deeply impressed by the boy's insight into what history is: at his school they don't teach history, just "topics". Classism is touched on in a meaningful way, and then the story continues.
A book worth reading more than once. show less
There's an unforgettable episode in which the brother, clearly a child of the working class, asks the history teacher at one of the posh schools for help in his research. (He's come to recognize, or half-believe at least, that "Creep" is somewhen in the past.) The teacher is dismissive at first and then deeply impressed by the boy's insight into what history is: at his school they don't teach history, just "topics". Classism is touched on in a meaningful way, and then the story continues.
A book worth reading more than once. show less
My first Jill Paton Walsh and I wasn't overly impressed by A Presumption of Death.
Pros: It kept me reading until the end, and I'm actually not much of a crime fiction fan outside of Dorothy L and, when I'm feeling like some light reading, the occasional 'Miss Marple' or 'Miss Seeton'; so that's a point in her favour.
Cons: (1) JPW is simply not as good a prose writer as DLS. She doesn't flow so well and I occasionally came upon awkward sentence structures that Dorothy L would never have show more allowed into print. (2) I haven't checked this out properly as yet (and I probably won't bother), but some of the language she gave people struck me as anachronistic, leaving me thinking that people in that time and place just would not have spoken quite like that. (3) I wasn't impressed by some of her characterisation. Just off the top of my head, I don't think she at all accurately captured DLS's depiction of Puffet, the vicar's wife, Miss Twitterton or Helen, and I wasn't really convinced by the Dowager Duchess or Bunter, either (and I dread to think what Dorothy L. would have had to say about having Harriet undressing Bunter). (4) I missed the way DLS liberally peppered Harriet and Peter's speech and thoughts with unacknowledged and almost unsignalled literary quotes and allusions - for me that was one of the delights of the books and, after perhaps a couple of decades of reading, I still haven't chased down the half of them to their sources - always supposing I've actually spotted them all, which is unlikely. They were Dorothy L's way of signalling that Harriet and Peter were kindred spirits and potential soul mates - very important.
I'm sorry, but Jill Paton Walsh is just not Dorothy L. Sayer. show less
Pros: It kept me reading until the end, and I'm actually not much of a crime fiction fan outside of Dorothy L and, when I'm feeling like some light reading, the occasional 'Miss Marple' or 'Miss Seeton'; so that's a point in her favour.
Cons: (1) JPW is simply not as good a prose writer as DLS. She doesn't flow so well and I occasionally came upon awkward sentence structures that Dorothy L would never have show more allowed into print. (2) I haven't checked this out properly as yet (and I probably won't bother), but some of the language she gave people struck me as anachronistic, leaving me thinking that people in that time and place just would not have spoken quite like that. (3) I wasn't impressed by some of her characterisation. Just off the top of my head, I don't think she at all accurately captured DLS's depiction of Puffet, the vicar's wife, Miss Twitterton or Helen, and I wasn't really convinced by the Dowager Duchess or Bunter, either (and I dread to think what Dorothy L. would have had to say about having Harriet undressing Bunter). (4) I missed the way DLS liberally peppered Harriet and Peter's speech and thoughts with unacknowledged and almost unsignalled literary quotes and allusions - for me that was one of the delights of the books and, after perhaps a couple of decades of reading, I still haven't chased down the half of them to their sources - always supposing I've actually spotted them all, which is unlikely. They were Dorothy L's way of signalling that Harriet and Peter were kindred spirits and potential soul mates - very important.
I'm sorry, but Jill Paton Walsh is just not Dorothy L. Sayer. show less
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- Works
- 60
- Also by
- 21
- Members
- 8,519
- Popularity
- #2,825
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 255
- ISBNs
- 351
- Languages
- 10
- Favorited
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