Lynda la plante biography

Detective Jack Warr and Listening to the Dead

Revisiting her beloved Widows reconnected Lynda with the characters in the series, and led to the launch of a brand-new series starring Detective Jack Warr. The first novel in the series, Buried, published in 2020 and provided a final farewell to the characters, as well as introducing many new ones – including a charismatic new detective in Jack Warr. The series became an instant Sunday Times bestseller and Lynda La Plante’s best selling title since in nearly a decade, selling over 150,000 copies worldwide. The sequel, Judas Horse, is out now.

In 2020 Lynda La Plante launched a new podcast, Listening to the Dead, with her researcher and adviser, former CSI Cass Sutherland. The series focus is on forensic science, sorting science fact from fiction, studying real-life cases and meeting the experts in the field of forensics. The second series launched in February 2021, focussing on Cause of Death.

Lynda La Plante lives in London and New York with her son Lorcan and Cockapoo Max and their new puppy, a miniature whippet called Pluto!

Lynda La Plante is an English author, screenwriter and former actress. She is perhaps best known as the writer and creator of the Prime Suspect television crime series. Formerly an actor, Lynda broke through as a writer in 1983 when she created and wrote the six-part robbery series Widows for Thames Television. Her debut novel was published in 1987, and in 1991 Prime Suspect, starring Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison, first appeared on screens. It has won multiple BAFTAs, Emmy Awards and Golden Globe Awards and in 2007 was named as one of Time magazine's 100 Best Shows of All Time.

Lynda was made a CBE in 2008 for services to Literature, Drama and Charity. She is a member of The Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame and is the only lay person to be made a fellow of The Forensic Science Society. Her latest book, Good Friday, is due in August.

Who were your literary influences as you were growing up?

Predominantly Shakespeare and the classic playwrights, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov. In the classroom we read the Brontës, and my favourite of the Brontë Sisters was Anne. I also loved reading Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

Before your career as a writer you appeared as an actress in some of the most iconic British TV series, Z-Cars, The Sweeney and The Professionals amongst others. What are your memories of that time?

My clearest memories from when I was acting in the TV dramas was that they were such fun! I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I think, perhaps because I never had the deep-seated desire to be a famous actress, somehow I think of those times as being very light-hearted.

When you wrote Prime Suspect in 1991 there were not many strong female police characters in crime dramas. Now they are commonplace. Do you think Jane Tennison helped pave the way for some of the characters that followed?

I do believe that Jane Tennison paved the way for many of the strong female police characters that we have in crime dramas today. Often what is n

After starting out as a RADA-trained actress under the name Lynda Marchal in 1969, with television roles ranging from drama to comedy, she moved easily into a screenwriting career as Lynda La Plante.

Her first script for television was the woman's point-of-view six-part crime drama Widows (ITV, 1983), in which four women carry out their late husbands' planned armoured-car robbery. The success of this tough crime caper placed her firmly in the TV thriller writers' landscape. She was perhaps the first female British television crime writer, joining the male-dominated ranks of such TV "tough guy" writers as Ian Kennedy Martin, Troy Kennedy Martin, and Ranald Graham.

In the years following the highly popular Widows, La Plante became one of British television's most sought-after writers of crime/underworld-themed drama. With her incredibly prolific output of well-researched, multi-part 'mean streets' thrillers - with the narrative observed from an astute woman's angle - La Plante has broadened the scope of the television crime/mystery genre.

Her prestige as a TV writer was assured when she created DCI Jane Tennison for the psychological police drama Prime Suspect (ITV, 1991), introducing one of British TV's most memorable characters of the 1990s (enhanced through a no-nonsense performance by Helen Mirren).

In 1994 she created her television company La Plante Productions and under that aegis wrote and produced the sequel to Widows, the equally gutsy She's Out (ITV, 1995). Her output continued with The Governor (ITV, 1995-96), a series focusing on the female governor of a high security prison, and was followed by a string of ratings-pulling miniseries: the psycho-killer nightmare events of Trial and Retribution (ITV, 1997-), the undercover police unit operations of Supply and Demand (ITV, 1998), and the female criminal profiler cases of Mind Games (ITV, 2001).

La Plante's crime-writing know-how appears to have all the indicati

English writer and actress (born 1943)

Lynda Joy La Plante, CBE (née Titchmarsh; born 15 March 1943) is an English author, screenwriter and former actress often known for writing the Prime Suspect television crime series. In 2024 she was honoured with the Crime Writers' Association of Britain's Diamond Dagger award for her outstanding lifetime's contribution to the crime and mystery fiction genre.

Early life

Lynda La Plante was born Lynda Joy Titchmarsh on 15 March 1943 in Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire. La Plante's older sister Dail was killed in a road accident, at the age of five, before she was born. Her younger sister, Gill Titchmarsh is a casting director, and the two have often worked together. They also had a brother who was a doctor.

Raised in Crosby, Liverpool, La Plante trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After finishing her studies, using the stage name Lynda Marchal, she appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company in a variety of productions, as well as popular television series including Z-Cars, Educating Marmalade, The Sweeney, The Professionals, and Bergerac. As an actress she is perhaps best remembered as the hay-fever suffering ghost Tamara Novek in the BBC children's series Rentaghost. In 1974, La Plante took her first scriptwriting job on the ITV children's series The Kids from 47A.

Widows and career breakthrough

Her breakthrough came in 1983 when she created and wrote the six-part robbery series