WEBVTT - The Girlfriends S3/Bonus Ep 4: Live from Wilderness with Kate Summerscale 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:04.320 Hey, Girlfriends, it's Anna here. This is Bonus episode four, 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:07.480 the final one, and this one's really special because it 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:11.280 was recorded live at Wilderness Festival back in August. It's 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.400 going to include a lot of discussion about murder and 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:16.959 violence against women, and it's going to touch on the 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:22.040 topic of abortion. But it's also really fascinating discussion about 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:25.240 the ethics of true crime and the roles we all 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:26.720 play as part of it. 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:29.080 So to the festival. 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.959 Hello, and welcome to our very first live podcast recording 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:37.440 of The Girlfriends. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.880 It is so great to be here at Wilderness Festival. 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:44.080 I've got a crick in my neck because I slept 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:45.520 badly last night in a tent. 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:47.760 Awful, but it was so nice as well. 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:52.560 I'm Anna Sinfield and today I'm joined by Kate summer Scale, 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:55.320 the author of The Peak Show, which is a true 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.760 crime book about a set of eight shocking murders that 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:02.600 happened in London in the nineteen forties and fifties. The 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.920 book deep dives on the serial killer John Christie, his 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:09.200 female victims, and the circumstances that allowed him to go 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:13.760 uncourt for so long and potentially caused another man to 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:16.800 be hanged for his crime, but it also brings up 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:20.120 lots of interesting questions about the impact and role of 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:22.920 true crime reporting, which is basically what we're going to 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:31.880 be talking about today. So, without any further ado from 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.720 the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the 0:01:35.760 --> 0:02:08.840 Girlfriend's Jail House Lawyer. Okay, So fans of the Girlfriends 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.600 will know that our later series Your House Lawyer. 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:14.600 I wrestle with figuring out my role. 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:17.560 In reporting that story, and also, more broadly, with the 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:21.320 ethics of true crime reporting, of turning something so kind 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.880 of awful into a sense of like morbid entertainment. And 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:28.600 I know that that's something that you've had to wrestle 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:32.760 with yourself in your book The Peak Show, Kate. And 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:36.000 so before we get a little too existential about our jobs, 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:38.560 I was wondering if you could tell me first what 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.200 drew you to this story out of all the grizzly 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:42.280 murders in the world. 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:46.239 It felt as if I'd always dimly known about it, 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:51.680 like a horrible fairy tale. I saw the wax statue 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:55.920 of reg Christie at the Madame Tusword's Chamber of Horrors 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.320 when I was about eight, and I saw the film 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:02.080 tenon Place on late night TV when I was in 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:06.760 my teens, and I remembered it when there were the 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:11.080 murders of several women in London in twenty twenty twenty 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:16.280 one who had been killed by strangers, Sarah Everard among them, 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:21.480 and I started thinking about that phenomenon, men who kill 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.600 women who are strangers to them just because they are women, 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:30.800 And I started wondering why, and I remembered the Rillington 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.480 Place story. I didn't even remember Red Christie's name at 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:35.800 the time, but when I looked it up, I saw 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:39.960 various parallels and echoes with the more recent crimes, and 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:44.960 I thought that by studying him and his world, I 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:49.000 could get a better sense of the connections between a culture, 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:53.640 a society, and the violence it produces than by looking 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:56.240 at my own time, which is almost too close up 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:57.480 to see. 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:00.800 Yeah, I mean, when you looked at those crimes of 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:02.800 before and compared them to the crimes that you had 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:06.400 been experiencing in the early twenties, seeing these women murdered 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:10.280 by strangers, did you feel like there was difference? Did 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.840 you notice a difference between them or does it just 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:16.240 feel like this sad trope of male violence has just 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:17.520 continued in the same form. 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.200 I did notice more the similarities and the differences. He 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:27.360 was not least Christie, I discovered, like Wayne Cousins, was 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:31.440 serving as a policeman when he committed his first known murder. 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:34.640 He was a reserve policeman during the Second World War, 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:39.440 which was an amazing opportunity for catching women unawares and 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:41.240 concealing crimes of violence. 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:45.400 So yes, I noticed the parallels, but it was. 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:49.200 Sort of easier to see at a distance in the fifties, 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:53.360 the way that Christie's attitudes were so closely echoed in 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.680 the press, in the police force, in the way that 0:04:55.760 --> 0:05:00.640 pathologists talked about the victims, and so it helt easier 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:03.920 to understand him as a product of his society as 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.279 well as of his individual life. 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.440 You brought up the press there, and a big part 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:13.880 of your book focuses on this crime reporter called Harry Procter, 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.159 and you say in the book, and I'm going to 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:20.320 quote this, that he was successful because he didn't just 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:22.480 tell a story, he infiltrated it. 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:23.880 He embedded himself. 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.359 I know that I lose myself in so many of 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:29.760 the cases that I work on, and they're pretty kind 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:34.760 of hardcore stories of people being killed or experiencing violence 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:39.080 in some respect, Are you as obsessive about your stories 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:40.320 as Harry Procter and me. 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:45.680 Yeah, I love the research more than any other part 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:48.560 of the composition of a book. I mean, most of 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:53.000 my research, because I write historical stories, is in archives, 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.880 and so I'm going through old papers, witness statements, in 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:04.000 police files, transcripts of trials, photographs, maps, floor plans, and 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:08.000 I get completely lost in it. And it feels, you know, 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:10.320 as you literally are sort of touching the past. You're 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:14.560 holding the same documents as the people who you're writing 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:17.599 about and thinking about, and so I find it very, 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:18.640 very absorbing. 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:19.560 Yeah. 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.679 I mean, I don't know about you, But on my desk, 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.520 my writing desk at home now, I've got a kind 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:30.039 of really quite weird and perverse collection of belongings and 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:34.880 things that have been owned by victims in some of 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:38.320 my stories or their families, and I've been gifted them 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:40.479 or you know, loaned them so that i can do 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:44.479 my research, and it always feels so different holding you know, 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:46.599 for example, I've got a version of a book that 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:50.880 was owned by this woman called Heidi's Family in the 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.680 second series of the girlfriends. We identify this woman called 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:56.840 Heidi who had been murdered, and I've got her dad's 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.920 version of a book that was written about her murder. 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.599 And it feels so strange to own that artifacts and 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:06.600 to hold it in my hand. It feels different from 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:08.479 the version that I had when it was just from 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:12.200 the library. Do you feel strange touching the past in 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:12.920 that way. 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:13.800 Yes, i'd have. 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.960 I mean maybe because they happened seventy years ago. I 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:20.480 don't have so many objects in my possession, but they 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:23.280 are just open to the public. It feels kind of 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:26.800 miraculous that you can just order up these papers and 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:31.280 artifacts sometimes and sort of be with them and touch them. 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:35.120 And sometimes there are weird coincidences. I'll order a second 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.480 hand book on the internet and when it arrives, open 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:41.080 it and find it's sort of being inscribed to one 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:44.520 of the characters in the story. And then you feel 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.880 part of actually a strangely close knit network or world, 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:51.760 and you feel like you're sort of participating in it, 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:56.400 albeit over time you're not their live, but the aspiration 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:58.440 is to sort of be live, And in moments like that, 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:02.160 you feel like it almost is unfolding in real time. 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:26.800 There's a line in your book that really stood out 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:28.800 to me because it's been something I've been pulling my 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.360 hair out a little bit over. Is you wrote being 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:36.920 complicit in a culture that made morbid entertainment of women's bodies. 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.720 I believe you were talking about the journalism of the time. 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.160 But as a true crime writer today, do you think 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:46.199 that's changed and what do you think your role is 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:46.880 in that? 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:50.120 I think it's much more starkly visible. 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:54.160 In the nineteen fifties, the ways in which the tabloid 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:59.520 press in particular, but also movies and posters and adverts 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:05.800 entered women was so sort of glaringly sexualized and objectified, 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:10.680 and for entertainment, you know, for pleasure, for male flecture principally, 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:14.240 But of course there are versions of that now, but 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:16.360 it's less in your face, so you kind of see 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:20.280 it more clearly. And in fact, there were murders that 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:23.720 took place in North London in twenty twenty near where 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:27.600 I live. Bieber Henry and Nicole Smallman, who sisters, were 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.520 killed in a park. They were killed by a stranger 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:33.560 who had a mission to kill a certain number of women, 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:40.840 and afterwards the police circulated photographs of their bodies and 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:45.800 talk about a peep show, talk about making a morbid entertainment. 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:49.840 But the press does the same. A book like mine 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:54.800 does that. It's trying to tell a story that will 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:59.360 engage in gross script the reader and the subject is 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:03.640 the of these women. So there's some degree of complicity, 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:05.840 but there are different ways of doing it. There are 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:09.480 different ways of thinking and feeling about it and presenting it. 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.720 And in fact, in my book, I made the decision 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.760 to not include a photo section because there seemed no 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:21.440 way of illustrating this book without having a sort of 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:27.280 gallery of victims mugshots. So that's sort of try to 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:31.280 use Harry Procter in a way, who was also troubled 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:37.600 by some of these issues and was the style crime 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:40.880 reporter for one of the best selling tabloids in the country. 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:44.800 Use him to help me think about what I'm doing 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:47.320 and what we do and what we do as readers 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:50.840 of true crime or listeners to through crime podcasts and 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:55.560 so on, and to at least reflect on that as 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:55.920 I go. 0:10:56.440 --> 0:10:59.040 Yeah, well, I mean that was going to be one 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:04.679 of my next questions was in Harry Potter's autobiography in 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:07.680 relation to people criticizing his reporting, He says, it was 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:10.400 tougher for me to do than for you to read it, 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:12.800 So why the hell do we do it? 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:17.680 That sounds very defensive to me of Harry Procter. 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:17.880 It. 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:21.600 It's not a little I mean, I wouldn't do it 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:24.920 unless I did enjoy it and find it rewarding and 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:29.960 feel I was some gripped and learnt things by doing it. 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.160 And he goes on in that passage to sort of 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:37.000 he blames his editors for sending him out on these stories, 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:39.640 and in fact, he did eventually have a nervous breakdown 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:43.160 because they wouldn't take him off. So he blames his editors, 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:45.760 He blames his bosses for sending him out on the stories, 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:48.880 and he blames his readers. He says, I only give 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:51.280 it to you because you want it, you know, before 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.480 you back through a moral outrage at me, you're the 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.600 ones who want it. So it all sounds very troubled 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:00.920 and defensive to me, as if he really he really 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:04.600 is struggling with his role in this material and the 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:08.760 ways in which he and many in Fleet Street carried 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:12.640 out their inquiries at the time is quite shocking by 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:17.560 today's standards, but that doesn't you know, it's still a 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:19.359 it's all on a spectrum. 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:24.480 Yeah, I mean, obviously, as a true homewriter, I also 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.480 am going to endorse that it's a good medium. But 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.160 I do think that there are some genuine upsides to 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:31.680 some of the stuff we do, and you point out 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:34.319 some in your book. For example, some of the essays 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:37.080 and works around Tim Evans, the man who was hanged 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.840 prior to Christie's arrest, that helped move the needle on 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:44.680 conversations around the death penalty. So like, actually that writing 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:45.960 helped make a difference. 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.600 Yeah, And Harry Proctor was desperate to get Christy to 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:53.800 confess to the murder of the little girl, one year 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:57.520 old girl for which Tim Evans had hanged, And it 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:01.560 wasn't just a search for justice this particular case, but 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:07.079 also to expose the way that the justice system could 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:12.560 malfunction and innocent people because there was capital punishment, could 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:14.480 be sent to their deaths and so there was no 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:18.760 way of correcting the error. So the Evans case was 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:22.839 really instrumental in getting the death penalty abolished in the 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.079 nineteen sixties. It took that long, but Harry Propter was 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:31.439 part of that push to expose the truth, and the government. 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.839 Was very keen to. 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:36.120 Move on and cover up this stuff because they wanted 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.120 to defend the justice system, but also the existence of 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.800 the death penalty, continuation of the death penalty, So it 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:46.440 was quite a political story in those ways, but it 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:50.760 also brought to light the reporting on the case, the 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:53.920 publicity given to it also brought to light quite a 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:59.760 lot of fractures and tensions in British society, and quite 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:05.280 a lot of desperate practices, such as an awareness about 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:11.240 illegal abortion and how dangerous it was and how desperate 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:15.600 single women often were when they became pregnant and this 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:19.520 was their only recourse at back street abortion because Christy 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:24.440 posed as and I think acted as a backstreet abortionist, 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.600 and this was one of the means by which he 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:31.280 lured women to his home, and so the vulnerability, it 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:35.320 was a particularly dramatic manifestation of the danger of back 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.640 street abortion. You wouldn't normally expect to be murdered, but 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:43.760 it was a fairly risky procedure in which women did sometimes. 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:45.520 Die and were very easily exploited. 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:49.800 Yeah, I mean, both of those examples are examples of 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:52.440 crime reporting that's actually making a difference. 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:53.880 It's having a cultural impact. 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:58.760 Do you think that crime reporting always needs to you know, 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:01.800 the north Star needs we have an impact, We change things, 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:02.800 we do something different. 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:06.720 I don't think you always know what the impact will be, 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:11.800 So I don't think needs to be justified by that. 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:17.560 I think stories are worth telling. Terrible events are worth 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:22.240 exploring to find out where they come from, what form 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:26.920 they take, how they manifest themselves. And also some stories 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:29.680 very interested in the way that some of these terrible 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:35.480 stories express the fears and fantasies, often the unspoken fears 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:38.920 and fantasies of a wider world. So as a writer, 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:44.080 as a researcher, writing about crime feels like getting access 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:48.520 to a kind of underground emotional life of a society. 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:49.040 Of a culture, as a nation. 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:52.680 You start to see the things that animate people, that 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:56.680 scare them, that they fantasize about. And so there are 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.920 lots of ways, not all of them practical, in where 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:04.880 which a crime story, a story of violence can help 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:07.480 us learn who we are and where we come from 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:09.320 and how the world worked. 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:11.760 Well, that was one of the things that I thought 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:15.040 was great about your book, because you really pointed the 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:18.320 finger back at the audience at all of the kind 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:20.880 of sickos in the room today who like to listen 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:25.160 about murders and read about murders and grizzly things and 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:31.000 the darkest parts of society, and you kind of say, 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:33.920 why is it that you want to participate in this 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:37.840 grizzly peep show? And there are examples of it in 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:40.040 the book as well. There was a group of women 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:42.160 who tried to break in after it was kind of 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:44.640 all boarded up, just because they presumably wanted to be 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:47.480 in this place where so much darkness had happened to 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:50.920 other women. And people want to know the worst details, 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:54.200 don't they. Why do you think people are so obsessed 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:55.240 with true crime? 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:58.600 Such a big question when I read about the women 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:01.480 who tried to break in through the bay window at 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:06.040 Tamorylington Place, and I thought war weird, you know, And 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:08.160 then I thought, it's what I'm doing. 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:11.720 You're breaking into the window, breaking into the window and 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:13.280 trying to get inside the house. 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:16.920 You know, it's not so different. And people clamored at 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:22.720 the courthouses to see Christy, to see him, and it 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:26.080 was remarked upon sometimes that a lot of them were women. 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.280 And now true crime podcasts at two thirds of the 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.760 audiences are women, so that as a route to why 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.560 are we so fascinated by it? I mean, one quite 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.399 compelling idea to me is that there are stories that 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:43.879 get told through these crimes that are not often aired, 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:49.640 stories about domestic violence, about maratal unhappiness, about betrayal, about 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:55.000 problems between parents and children, about unwanted pregnancies, that a 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:59.199 lot of the domestic difficulty that many women kind of 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:03.880 deal with it isn't aired so much in the pages 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:07.320 of the press, and certainly didn't used to be in 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:11.120 the nineteen fifties, unless through a story of a violent crime. 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.360 So it gives us access to things that we sort 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:16.760 of know about or half know about, or want to 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.560 talk about. Another thing would be that it's a kind 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:24.480 of knowing your enemy impulse. Do you want to see 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:27.240 the man who might kill you, or what that kind 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:29.960 of man looks like, or what makes him, how to 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:35.280 identify him, what circumstances the women who were killed by 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.560 him found themselves in that that happened to them, So 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:43.480 a self protective instinct perhaps does at work as well. Also, 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:47.200 I think there are just our own anger fear. Maybe 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:51.320 even violent stories finds an outlet in thinking about and 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:54.520 learning about these things, it can act as some kind 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:58.359 of vent or self expression. Reading as well as writing, 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:00.359 can be that kind of self express. 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:28.480 I get that. Okay, So now I've called your sickos. 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:31.320 I was just wondering if any of you had any 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:36.120 questions for me or Kate, No pressure, Lovely over here, 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:39.560 ll wait for the microphone. 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:41.159 We've got to get it on the podcast. 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:45.640 So dark stuff. 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:49.800 So do you have some sort of cleansing for yourself 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:52.520 once you've done some detailed research and you've written the 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:54.080 book to step away? 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:57.720 Do you need to do that at all? It feels 0:19:57.840 --> 0:19:58.480 a big relief. 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:01.080 Maybe this is the case for a writer, but with 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:03.840 a story as intense as this, and I did work 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:07.000 on it very intensely, partly because there was so much material, 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.920 I needed to go fast to kind of keep it 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:13.800 in my head, to keep the story straight. And there's 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:16.679 a great relief in sharing it with other people, in 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:21.199 the first instance, your editor, a publishing team, that it 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:25.240 stops being just yours. So publication is in itself a 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:29.760 kind of lifting of the story from a private sphere 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:32.640 into a public sphere, and people can read it converse 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.879 with you about it. So something that has been internal 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:40.960 conversations becomes something that can be talked about and that 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:44.520 feels good, that feels really nice. I mean perhaps you're 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:48.399 asking about during the process of writing. I think it 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:53.200 feels like any job I need, you know, company, different 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:58.199 things going on. I don't feel that it's a particularly 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:01.560 more difficult thing to bear than any other. It's something 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:06.160 I'm interested in enjoy. I don't feel poisoned by it, 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:08.840 you know. I don't feel I need to be cleansed 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:11.520 as I go. I just need sort of light and shade, 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:15.560 as anyone would doing things for fun instead of things 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:17.399 that are intense and purposeful. 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.439 Yeah, I think in short, hate's made of strong stuff. 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:23.200 I don need some cleansing after all of my shows 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:28.560 any more questions? Got one over here just in front. 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:32.480 Hello. Do you when you go back to the start 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:35.280 of your career to now, do you reflect on how 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:38.280 it's perhaps shaped you as a person in your response 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:38.800 to the world. 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:41.840 Well, I've had a big change of career in that 0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:46.320 I worked as a journalist for many years for newspapers. 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:47.880 I was an editor. 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:52.800 Rather than a writer, and I left to write a 0:21:52.920 --> 0:22:00.600 book which was successful Beyond my dreams and need to 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:04.960 continue writing books and that's all I do. That's been 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:07.840 a huge change because I get to decide what I 0:22:07.880 --> 0:22:11.040 do every day. I get to sort of follow my nose, 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:15.480 follow my curiosity, and I miss the company of the 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:19.200 newspaper office. It's quite a solitary work I do now, 0:22:19.800 --> 0:22:24.679 but I love being able to determine my own path 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:28.600 all the time, and I'm sure that has changed me 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:32.119 as a person and how I feel my place in 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:32.560 the world. 0:22:33.280 --> 0:22:34.919 I think we've got time, but one more question then 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:36.000 I've got to wrap it up. 0:22:37.600 --> 0:22:40.679 Hi, So you were talking about why people listen to 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:44.240 true crime. Do you think that because in the media 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:48.320 killers are kind of shown as like monsters and stuff. 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:51.600 Do you think there's like a need to feel separated 0:22:51.680 --> 0:22:55.600 from those people. What are your thoughts on that. 0:22:56.119 --> 0:22:57.840 Oh, I think totally yes. 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:02.520 And I really noticed in the coverage of Christie how 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:06.280 eager the press was to sort of monster him, you know, 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.480 to either talk about him as a psychopath, a word 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:11.919 I find quite problematic, just the way you're saying, like, 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:16.280 not like me, you know, a monster, a creature, and 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:20.960 the desire to distance oneself from the murderer and to 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:24.920 be reassured that you're not that is. I think one 0:23:24.920 --> 0:23:28.520 of the pleasures of reading about crime, whether it's fictional 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:34.160 or factual, and it's a totally understandable impulse, but one 0:23:34.160 --> 0:23:36.440 of its effects is to sort of say that this 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:39.680 person has nothing to do with the society in which 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:43.800 he lived, and I think there is more complicity than that. 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:48.720 I was eager neither to glamorize Christie as this sort 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:53.600 of great serial killer, you know, cunning, but nor to 0:23:53.680 --> 0:23:56.640 distance him in the way that the press did at 0:23:56.640 --> 0:24:01.520 the time, and to make him so different, so kind 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:05.160 of exceptional. And I could see he was in some ways. 0:24:05.160 --> 0:24:08.320 He wasn't exceptional. The things he ultimately did were, but 0:24:08.440 --> 0:24:13.840 his sort of fantasies and assumptions and prejudices were perfectly ordinary, 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:17.719 I mean, frighteningly ordinary. And I'm sure it's shared across 0:24:17.720 --> 0:24:20.159 the society. And I totally agree with you that one 0:24:20.240 --> 0:24:22.760 of the pleasures of especially like if you read a 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:24.720 crime novel and you get to the end and you're 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:27.480 one of the pleasures is it wasn't me, you know, 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:32.480 knowing to do with me, So feelings of kind of 0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:36.000 unease or guilt are dispelled by the identification of the 0:24:36.080 --> 0:24:38.280 murderer and the assignment of blame. 0:24:39.520 --> 0:24:39.720 Yeah. 0:24:39.760 --> 0:24:42.160 On the Girlfriend's Joe House Lawyer, which is the podcast 0:24:42.160 --> 0:24:44.919 that's coming out at the moment, We've actually tried to 0:24:44.960 --> 0:24:48.320