Lucy looks at notorious killings from the time and explores the books, plays and songs they inspired. Sayers and Agatha Christie as well as the part they played in the rapid growth in popular crime fiction and finishes with the decline of the genteel murderer to the more thriller based popular fiction that we still enjoy today. An interesting and enjoyable read, which I would suggest would be an ideal entry-level book for anyone looking to find out more about the history of crime fiction and its links with society. We were becoming a much more humane society by then, and in fact had been thus since 1823, when the Judgement of Death Act reduced the number of capital crimes to those guilty of treason, murder or piracy. I think A Very British Murder has managed to use various crimes to paint a picture of how British society evolved, why the crimes were fascinating, and linked true crime to crime fiction.

Maybe because it was originally written TV series the narrative does jump backwards and forwards a little at times but I still found it easy to follow the point the author was attempting to make in each of the twenty-four chapters. From Jack the Ripper to Agatha Christie, what does this murderous obsession tell us about the British psyche? At a point during the birth of modern England, murder entered our national psyche, and it s been a part of us ever since. She sneaked her three-year-old half-brother out of bed, slit his throat, and hid his body down an outdoor privy.Prior to that she states that everyone was far more concerned with the everyday battles to feed and clothe themselves, however with the rise in literacy levels amongst the population, murder became a source of entertainment. Ture crime is used as a starting point to show the fascination and natural progression to creating fictional equivalents. I thought, when rereading the book last year, that it was a bit unfair to see Lady Audley as a complete villainess and I was happy to see that I’m not the only one that thinks that way. It turns out that what the lower middle and working classes most wanted to do, in their leisure time, was to come face-to-face with murderers. Since this book is about our obsession with crime (mostly true but also fictional), the emphasis here is not on the various cases.

Examining several "high profile" cases - the most interesting of which for me was the Ratcliff Highway Murders as I knew nothing about them - this traces back the roots of the public fascination for all things macabre in a very accessible way. By Chloe Penman / © BBC 2013 Lucy Worsley with Ratcliff Highway murder weapon in A VERY BRITISH MURDER. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Summary: The British obsession with murder over the last two centuries, a study published to accompany a BBC TV series of the same name. Short of genocide, murder is the worst, most shocking crime an individual can commit, yet it has become a kind of commodity which over the last years has been endlessly packaged as a mass market entertainment industry.

But among the gore and horror, we’ve also glanced aside at the history of literature, of education, of women’s place in society and of justice. Informative and entertaining, The Art of the English Murder is likely to appeal to those that are interested in the evolution of crime stories and detective novels. LUCY WORSLEY is a historian and Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces, where she looks after the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace among others. Crime and murder were discovered to provide public entertainment that "would thrill, horrify, and delight" leading to the popularity of the mystery novel. A clear introduction and conclusion to each chapter and clearer connection between information and sources would have been valuable.