Murder, Media, Misogyny (In person)
In their new works of narrative non-fiction, two award-winning, bestselling social historians, Hallie Rubenhold (The Five) and Kate Summerscale (The Suspicions of Mr Whicher), reframe two of the most infamous murder cases in British history, giving voice to the women at the centre of each story and considering how the confluence of misogyny and the media impacted the way the cases were investigated at the time and how they are remembered today.
In The Story of a Murder, Hallie Rubenhold retells the story of notorious Edwardian wife-murderer Dr Crippen through a feminist lens, exploring the life of his victim - the vivacious music hall performer Belle Elmore, the community of women who reported her missing, Crippen’s reportedly innocent lover Ethel Le Neve and his previous wife Charlotte, whose death remains shrouded in mystery. All were subject to the assumptions and prejudices of their society and to its insatiable appetite for salaciousness and scandal.
In The Peepshow, Kate Summerscale investigates the murders at 10 Rillington Place, half a century later than the Crippen case but no less sensational. Mining the archives to uncover the lives of Reg Christie's victims, the tabloid frenzy that their deaths inspired and the truth about what happened inside the house, the book is ‘a gripping account of murder, misogyny and spectatorship’ (Sarah Waters) which sheds fascinating light on the case, as well as on our still relentless fixation with true crime.
In conversation with Lennie Goodings, chair of iconic feminist publisher Virago, they discuss the intersection of murder, misogyny and the media at the heart of both cases and the horrifying resonances still glaringly present today.
Hallie Rubenhold is the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling and Baillie Gifford prize-winning author of The Five: The Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. A renowned social historian, whose expertise lies in revealing stories of previously unknown women and episodes in history, she is the author of The Covent Garden Ladies, which was the inspiration behind BBC TV's 'Harlots'; her biographical work, Lady Worsley's Whim, was dramatized by the BBC as 'The Scandalous Lady W'; and her two acclaimed novels, Mistress of My Fate and The French Lesson, give voice to the women written out by eighteenth-century literature.
Kate Summerscale's groundbreaking works of narrative non-fiction include The Queen of Whale Cay, which won the Somerset Maugham Award; her number-one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008 and was later adapted into an ITV drama starring Peter Capaldi; the bestselling Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace; the award-winning The Wicked Boy; the Baillie Gifford shortlisted The Haunting of Alma Fielding; and The Book of Phobias & Manias. The Peepshow was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025.
Lennie Goodings is Chair of Virago Press and was Virago Publisher for twenty-five years. She has edited and published writers including Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Sarah Dunant, Natasha Walter, Marilynne Robinson, Sandi Toksvig and Sarah Waters. She was named Nibbies Editor of the Year (2010), received the Lifetime Achievement award at Women of the World Festival (2018) and is the author of A Bite of the Apple: A Life with Writers, Books and Virago (OUP 2020).
Books by the speakers will be available to buy at the event and online from our partner bookshop Hatchards.
This event will take place in person at The London Library. Doors (and the bar) will open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Please see our Event Access Guidelines before you arrive.
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