Penelope Morrison Chambers was born in 1942 in Sheffield, England. Her father, Edward Gaylord Chambers, worked for the colonial office as a mid-level civil servant. He was originally from Essex. Her mother, Megan O'Donnell Morrison, came from Limerick, Ireland. Ms. Chambers lived her early youth in India until its independence in 1949. Her father and family were then transferred to Ceylon for nine months before three years in Kenya. It was at this time that Ms. Chambers was sent back to England to attend Cheltenham Girls' College before attending Christ Church College at Oxford University. Her parents and younger brother were brutally murdered by the Mau Mau on the outskirts of Lamu, Kenya, in 1952. Ms. Chambers married the Second Earl of Doonsberry and Worcester in 1971. He tragically died in a motorcycle accident in 1977. He had been a barrister in London. They had no children. Ms. Chambers never remarried but, in her own words, 'had many friends'. Ms. Chambers worked for the British Foreign Office from 1979 to 1998 as a liaison officer and travelled to many sensitive regions of the world. In this capacity, she spent five years in the United States, first in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1985 to 1986, and then in Washington D.C. from 1992 to1995. Asked what made her wish to write fiction, she responded that she had felt a yearning desire to do so after seeing 'Whitehead Revisited' on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in the United States. It had reminded her of her late husband. Questioned why she chose such a controversial topic, she answered that she had just read Paul-Loup Sulitzer's novel, Le Roi Vert, a French translation of his original work, and felt that its hero, Red Michael Klimrod, was so incredible as to be almost unbelievable, and that a reply was needed, even if twenty years late. In her own words: "I guess Klimrod was Sulitzer's idea of the modern day version of the Jewish Superman, but he is definitely not a person I would like to meet. I hope readers will not therefore consider me anti-Semitic, since I'm sure many Jews, especially women, would agree with me." Asked why her main characters were American and her novel centered on a man, Ms. Chambers coldly replied that having a man as the novel's main character would increase selling appeal. The follow up question being as to whether or not she would write a sequel to Debra, she threw down the proverbial gauntlet, saying, "Only if my main character McCue makes me money, and I suppose that all depends on you, doesn't it?" To those critics who commented that Ms. Chambers was much too one-sided in her defense of the Roman Catholic Church, Ms. Chambers wryly retorted that her father had been overlooked because her mother was of Catholic-Irish origin. Also criticized for her thoughts on politics and sex, Ms. Chambers only smiled before saying that politics and sex always mixed company, not that politics was necessarily bad, but that sex was always good.
