A Very British Murder

Murder – a dark, shameful deed, the last resort of the desperate or a vile tool of   the greedy. And a very strange, very British obsession. But where did this fixation develop? And what does it tell us about ourselves?

A Very British Murder investigates this phenomenon, revisiting notorious crimes like the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which caused a nation-wide panic in the early nineteenth century, and the case of Frederick and Maria Manning, the suburban couple who were hanged after killing Maria’s lover and burying him under their kitchen floor. Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, puppet shows and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism. At a key turning point during the birth of modern Britain, murder entered our national psyche, and it’s been a part of us ever since.

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