The crime novelist Ruth Rendell will spend her birthday evening at the theatre watching Macbeth. She says: “I am very fond of Macbeth. Yes, it does have lots of murders but then so does most of Shakespeare.” Rendell has been writing for 40 years and is the author of about 60 books (“I’ve really lost count”), 20 devoted to Inspector Wexford and the others crime novels, some written under the name Barbara Vine.
About birthdays, she says: “I think if I didn’t know anybody else I would probably take no notice of them at all. But other people like one’s birthday and, though that is nice, it doesn’t do much for me.” She did not watch the recent perceptive television profile of her by Melvyn Bragg, “but everybody tells me they liked it. Yes, I did watch Wexford on television but then that isn’t me.” She is fiercely disciplined, writing only in the mornings, and very particular about what she eats. She says: “I eat the same thing pretty well all the time. I think everybody should stick at it once they find something they like. I try never to eat anything I don’t like.” Her favourite dish? “It’ll make you laugh but I love vegetable soup, I just adore vegetables.” On her birthday, however, she will be eating out and will probably be tempted by fish. Baroness Rendell of Babergh is 75 today. RGT
Sir Derek Andrews, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 1987-93, 72; Professor Gordon Cook, president of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 1993-95, 7; the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, Lord-Lieutenant of Fife, 1987-99, 81; Lord Hoyle, chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, 1992-97, 75; Barry Humphries, entertainer and author, 71; Dr Claire Palley, principal of St Anne’s College, Oxford, 1984-91, 74; Lord Slynn of Hadley, a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, 1992-2002, 75; Commandant Mary Talbot, director of the WRNS, 1973-76, 83; Sir Anthony Wilson, head of Government Accountancy Service and chief accounting adviser to HM Treasury, 1984-88, 77.