Jessica Mann

Mann was born in London in 1937 to Lore Ehrlich and Francis Mann, non-practising Jews who became exiles from Nazi Germany in 1933. Her sister was Nicola Beauman (née Mann), the founder of Persephone Books. Her parents retrained in English law on their arrival in the UK and her father would go on to be one of the lawyers who represented Britain at the trials of Nazi leaders in Nuremberg after the war. Her mother welcomed Jewish refugees to their Holland Park home and later opened a legal aid-style practice, staffed only by women.

Mann attended St Paul’s Girls’ School and at age 17 joined an archaeological dig in Cornwall, where she met her to-be husband, Charles Thomas. Following her degree in Archaeology and Anglo-Saxon at Newnham College, Cambridge, they got married.

Following time in Edinburgh and Leicester, where Mann took an LLB degree, Thomas was appointed the first director of the Institute of Cornish Studies at Pool and they moved to Cornwall. They lived at Lambessow, a Georgian house near Truro, where their neighbours included Terry Frost, William Golding, and DM Thomas.

Frustrated in her legal ambitions, Mann turned to writing crime fiction. Her 1986 book A Kind of Healthy Grave was longlisted for the Booker prize and as a reviewer of literary crime, Mann was known for her refusal to publicise any book that glorified violence against women. a flourishing media career. On radio, she represented Cornwall on the Round Britain Quiz and appeared on Radio Cornwall and Women’s Hour on Radio 4. She appeared on television on Question Time. She sat on employment tribunals (1977-2007), was active in the 1970s and 80s on various health authorities and committees, and worked an Environment Department planning inspector (1990-93) and chair of the customer services committee of Ofwat for the south-west (1993-2001).

After Thomas' death in 2016, Mann sold Lambessow and moved to Notting Hill, London. She died in Cornwall in 2018.