Peter Lovesey, a longtime P. D. James fan, once heard the noted author speak at the Pump Room in Bath, England. James explained that she must have had the mind of a crime writer even as a child, because when she first heard the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty, her first thought was "Did he fall, or was he pushed?"

[Lovesey later incorporated this line into his novel Bloodhounds.]