Graham was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire to a working-class family,[2] and attended Nuneaton High School for Girls where her English teacher encouraged her to write.[2][3] Graham's mother died when she was six and her father remarried when she was 13.[3] At the age of 14, she left school and went to work in Courtaulds Mill as a wefter.[2]
She served in the Women's Royal Naval Service from 1953 to 1955 but eventually ran away because she hated it.[3][4][5] She met up with her airforce penpal, Graham Cameron, whom she later married.[2] The couple moved to France, living in a mews house at Versailles where Cameron was stationed as part of his work for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe.[2] She had attended ballet school for three years during their stay in France.[3][4] After some time, they relocated to Lincoln, England where Graham spent three days a week in London at drama school.[2][3] They later split up, with Graham moving to London.[2] There, she met a new partner and became pregnant with her son, David.[2]
Since The Killings at Badger's Drift, Graham has written six more Inspector Barnaby novels; the last, A Ghost in the Machine, was published in 2004.[3] The first five Inspector Barnaby novels formed the basis of the first five episodes of Midsomer Murders. She has also written for the soap opera Crossroads. She has appeared in a series on detective writers titled Super Sleuths (2006),[10] appeared in one episode of The People's Detective (2010),[11] as well as appearing in episode 3 of Midsomer Murders. As of 2011, she was writing a novel set in the 1890s.[3]
