butterflies since her childhood, and during the 1970s she researched the subject with a view to writing a book about it. Her researches took her overseas, and she became recognised as an expert on the topic. Her book Butterflies on My Mind (1978), won a Times Educational Supplement award. In addition to this book she continued to produce crime novels throughout the decade: For Richer, For Richer (1970), Deadly Lampshade (1971), Understudy to Murder (1972), Dead Give Away (1974), Ride on a Tiger (1975), Stage Door Fright (short stories, 1977), and Dark Calypso (1979). 1980s In the 1980s Gray and Denison toured extensively. They starred in a British tour of Douglas-Home's The Kingfisher (1980–81), and made a Middle- and Far-East tour in Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking in 1981. Their other productions beyond the West End included The Cherry Orchard (1980) and The School for Scandal (several tours between 1982 and 1984, co-starring in one tour with Donald Sinden), in which Gray switched roles from Lady Sneerwell to Mrs Candour overnight. That production was given not only in Britain but in a ten-week tour for the British Council playing in 16 cities in nine countries. Both Gray and her husband were made CBE in 1983. The couple played at Windsor in Fry's Venus Observed (1980) and the farce See How They Run (1986). In the West End they appeared in Ronald Millar's A Coat of Varnish, Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1982), and Fry's Ring Round the Moon (1985 and 1988). They toured in Enid Bagnold's The Chalk Garden (1989). Without Denison, Gray toured in Douglas-Home's comedy Lloyd George Knew My Father, co-starring with Marius Goring. The Stage commented: With her husband, Gray toured the Middle East in 1985 in Ray Cooney and John Chapman's comedy There Goes the Bride. On her return to England, Gray began filming for her first regular role in a television series. She had made one-off television appearances in every decade from the 1940s onwards, with and without Denison, but the role of Kate Harvey in the BBC series Howards' Way brought her regularly to the notice of television viewers from 1985 to 1990. By the 1980s Gray had turned away from writing murder stories. During the decade she published three novels: The Glanville Women (1982), described as "a panoramic saga" of the lives of three generations, drawing on the author's memories of Malaya and her theatrical experiences;