15 Facts About Sarah Caudwell

Sarah Cockburn, who wrote under the pseudonym of Sarah Caudwell, was a British barrister and author of detective stories.

Sarah Caudwell's father was Claud Cockburn, the left-wing journalist, and her mother was Jean Ross, a journalist and political activist.

Sarah Caudwell's parents were unmarried and her father left three months after Sarah's birth.

Sarah Caudwell was the half-sister-in-law of Leslie Cockburn and Michael Flanders.

Sarah Caudwell received her MA in classics from the University of Aberdeen in 1960 and won a scholarship to study in Greece.

Sarah Caudwell then studied law at St Anne's College, University of Oxford.

Sarah Caudwell was one of the first two female students invited to speak at the Oxford Union, after her friends Jenny Grove and Rose Dugdale dressed in men's clothes to gain entrance to the male-only debating chamber and had then canvassed support for the admission of female students.

Sarah Caudwell then spent a year at Cite Universitaire des Jeunes Filles at Nancy, receiving a diploma in French law.

Sarah Caudwell practised as a barrister first at the Middle Temple and then at Lincoln's Inn, specialising in property and tax law.

Sarah Caudwell later joined Lloyds Bank, where she specialised in international tax planning and became a senior executive in the trust department.

Sarah Caudwell was a pipe-smoker, and inveterate crossword solver, reaching the final of The Times Crossword Competition more than once.

Sarah Caudwell died of throat cancer on 28 January 2000 in Whitehall, London.

Sarah Caudwell was particularly popular among other legal professionals, including American jurist Robert Bork, who was once quoted as saying, "In my opinion, there can't be too many Sarah Caudwell novels".

Sarah Caudwell wrote a play, The Madman's Advocate, which was given a rehearsed reading in Nottingham in 1995: a study of Daniel M'Naghten's attempt in 1843 to assassinate Sir Robert Peel and the resulting establishment of the M'Naghten Rule as a legal standard for defining the sanity of a defendant in law.

Sarah Caudwell won the 1990 award for The Sirens Sang of Murder in the same category.