| Contact details: | ruthdudleyedwards@rdemail.co.uk 07768 838 344 www.ruthdudleyedwards.co.uk Twitter: @RuthDE Facebook: Ruth Dudley Edwards |
| Education: | College, Dublin; Girton and Wolfson Colleges, Cambridge University |
| Professional qualifications: | B.A., M.A., D.Litt (National University of Ireland); Honorary D.Litt from Queen’s University Belfast (2011) Awards: National University of Ireland: Travelling Studentship Prize (l968); Prize for Irish Historical Research (l978 — for Patrick Pearse) James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography (1988 for Victor Gollancz) CrimeFest Last Laugh Award (2008 for Murdering Americans) Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction (2010 – for Aftermath) Goldsboro Books Last Laugh Award (2013 – for Killing the Emperors) |
| Employment: | Tutor in History (University College, Dublin) 1964‑5; Lecturer in History and English (Further Education institutions in Cambridge) 1965‑67; Marketing Executive in Data Communications (Post Office) 1970-74; Principal, Department of Industry (British Civil Service) 1975‑9; Freelance author 1979‑; Company historian of The Economist1982-2000; Freelance journalist and broadcaster since 1994 |
| Other positions: | Chairwoman, British Association for Irish Studies 1985-1993; Member, Executive Committee of the British‑Irish Association 1982-93; Member, Executive Committee of the Crime Writers’ Association 1995-8; Member of Management Committee of the Society of Authors 1996-9; Elected to the Detection Club 1996 Member, Executive Committee of the Crime Writers’ Association 2015- |
| Published books: | |
| Non‑fiction | An Atlas of Irish History (1973, 1981, 2005) Patrick Pearse: the triumph of failure (1977 and 2006) James Connolly (l981) Harold Macmillan: a life in pictures (1983) Victor Gollancz: a biography (1987) (James Tait Black Memorial Prize) The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist1843-1993 (1993) The Best of Bagehoht (1993) True Brits: Inside the Foreign Office (1994) The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions (1999) (Shortlisted for Channel 4/The House Political Book of the Year) Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil King and the Glory Days of Fleet Street (2003) Aftermath: the Omagh bombing and the families’ pursuit of justice (2009) (Long-listed for the Orwell Prize; winner of the CWA’s Gold Dagger for Non-fiction) The Seven: the lives and legacies of the founding fathers of the Irish Republic (2016) |
| Articles | ‘Ecclesiastical appointments in the province of Tuam, 1399-1477’ in Archivium Hibernicum, XXXIII, 1975 ‘Victor Gollancz’ in Dictionary of Business Biography (1984) ‘Confessions of an Irish Revisionist’ in Eric Homberger and John Charmley (eds), The Troubled Face of Biography (1988) ‘James Wilson, editor and statesman’ in Charles Walker (ed) A Legacy of Scots (1988) ‘Ruth Dudley Edwards’ in Rita Wall, Leading Lives: Irish women in Britain (1991) ‘Connolly and Pearse, deux sacrifices’ in Patrick Rafroidi, Pierre Joannon et Maurice Goldring (eds), Dublin, 1904-1924 (1991) ‘James Connolly’ and ‘Patrick Henry Pearse’ inDictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons(1993) ‘Unanswerable brilliance’, in Peter Kirwin (ed.), A Tribute to the Bank of England 1694-1994 (1994) ‘Following Conor’ in Richard English and Joseph Morrison Skelly, Ideas Matter: essays in honour of Conor Cruise O’Brien (1998) Essay in Lucy and McClure, Cool Britannia: what Britishness means to me (1999) ‘Peace at any price’ in Flannery and Cannon (eds.), Pens for Peace (2001) ‘John A. Murphy’ with Una O’Donoghue in Tom Dunne and Lawrence M. Geary (eds), History and the Public Sphere: Essays in Honour of John A. Murphy (2005) ‘James Connolly’, ‘Jill Neville’, ‘Patrick Pearse’ and ‘James Wilson’ in Dictionary of National Biography (2005) ‘The Outsider’, Britain and Ireland: Lives Entwined II (British Council, (2006) ‘Mrs Markievicz’, in Myles Dungan (ed.), Speaking ill of the dead (2007) ‘Alfred Harmsworth’, ‘Geraldine Harmsworth’, ‘Brian Inglis’, ‘Cecil Harmsworth King’ and ‘Lucas King’ in Dictionary of Irish Biography (2009) ‘The Informer: The Life and Art of Liam O’Flaherty’, in Declan Burke (ed), Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the 21st Century (2011) ‘Edmund Crispin and The Moving Toyshop, in John Connolly and Declan Burke (eds.), Books to Die for (2012) ‘Orwell and the IRA’, Christopher G. Moore (ed.), The Orwell Brigade (2012) |
| Fiction: books | Corridors of Death (l981) (shortlisted for Crime Writers’ Association Best First Novel award) The Saint Valentine’s Day Murders (1984) The School of English Murder (1990) Clubbed to Death (1992) (shortlisted for CWA Last Laugh Award) Matricide at St Martha’s (1994) Ten Lords A-Leaping (1995) (shortlisted for CWA Last Laugh Award) Murder in a Cathedral (1996) Publish and be Murdered (1998) The Anglo-Irish Murders (2000) Carnage on the Committee (2004) Murdering Americans (2007) (CrimeFest Last Laugh Award) Killing the Emperors (2012) (Goldsboro Books Last Laugh Award) |
| Fiction: short stories | ‘Death by the invisible hand’ in The Economist, 21 December 1996 ‘Father Brown in Muncie, Indiana’, in Patricia Craig (ed), The Oxford Book of Detective Stories (2000) and Maxim Jakubowski (ed.), The Mammoth Book of Comic Crime (2002) ‘Killing the Swans’ in Martin Edwards (ed.), Deadly Pleasures (2013) ‘Taking it Serious’ in Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville (eds.), Belfast Noir (2014) ‘The Enemy Within’ in L.C. Tyler and Ayo Onatade (eds.), Bodies in the Bookshop (2015) ‘It’s Good for You’ in Declan Burke (ed.) Trouble is Our Business (2016) ‘Digging Deep’ in Martin Edwards (ed) Motives for Murder Collaborative novel The Sinking Admiral (2016) by certain members of the Detection Club, Simon Brett (ed.) |
| Journalism | I have written for most major newspapers in Ireland and Britain and occasionally elsewhere – particularly the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph,The Independent, The Irish Times, the Sunday Independent and the Belfast Telegraph – and have appeared frequently on BBC and RTE radio and television as well as Sky and other assorted stations. Currently I am a columnist in the Belfast Telegraph and the Irish Sunday Independent. |
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