Pieces of me: Ruth Rendell, author

Crime writer Ruth Rendell Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

I’ve loved these Danish peasants all my life. They look so humble, so hardworking. My mother was a Swede who grew up in Denmark. When I go there, I visit the street where she grew up and look at her house, which is still there, and the snowberry bush, from which she ate some berries and had to have her stomach pumped Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

This creature belonged to my late husband, Don. He always liked to have him in the window as a guard wherever we lived. It was commissioned from the wonderful Suffolk Craft Society, of which I am patron Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

This painted table was made by Marianna Kennedy, a neighbour of my good friend Jeanette Winterson Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

I’m very fond of Tennessee Williams’ plays and when my husband and I went to New Orleans in the late 1970s we saw A Street Car Named Desire Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

I think I must be the only grandmother in the world who was given an iPod by her grandsons. It has changed my life — I’d be lost without it. It’s filled with an enormous number of operas — Handel is my favourite composer. I’ve got a cross trainer and a bicycle, and I listen to my iPod every day while I’m working out Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier is my favourite novel. I first read it in the 1950s and have read it about 20 times since. It’s possibly the best-constructed book in the English language Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

My sweet cats, Archie and Pearl, mean so much to me. The high point of Pearl’s day is when I groom her. It’s ecstasy. She leaps and growls and groans. Archie is a naughty boy and always in trouble. He has to be king of the place — he has never experienced feminism. Someone up the road accused him of being father of her kittens, but he can’t be because he’s been altered. Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

I love the colour pink. I have pink clothes, a pink iPod, and this pink bed. My husband and I were living in a big old farmhouse in Suffolk with a large wood. We were shattered when the hurricane of '97 hit. We decided we would save as much of the wood as we could. We had this bed built from ash. Donald Simpson also made a bed from our wood for my friend PD James. Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

This leather bull was given to me by my publishers when I had been published for 25 years. Now it’s 45 years. I’m a very energetic person. I don’t like relaxing. I read and read and read, and enjoy writing. Writing is what I’ve always done Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

This is about as nice a picture of a father with his children as you can get — it’s of my son Simon with his two sons, Phillip and Graham. They’re 16 and 14 now. My son used to have a wonderful log house in the Rocky Mountains and this was taken there. My daughter-in-law is not in the picture but she is very beautiful. They live in Colorado now Photograph: Teri Pengilley/freelance

This pillow was a special gift from my two grandchildren when they were small Photograph: Murdo Macleod/freelance