Toby Lichtig
A Killer in the Family
The James Bulger murder case was one of the abiding tabloid obsessions of the 1990s. When his young killers were released in 2001, after a maelstrom of debate including an intervention to prolong their sentence by the then Home Secretary Michael Howard, certain sections of the press sought to egg on vigilante mobs with a vigour usually reserved for paedophiles. The horror was at innocence corrupted, and the impulse was to dehumanise these deeply disturbed youngsters. Jon Thompson and Robert Venables were no longer children but ‘savages’, ‘monsters’, modern witches.
This impression was enhanced by their anonymity. Thompson and Venables were granted a lifetime of immunity from ‘exposure’. They grew into adults away from the public gaze; they are now, it is possible, leading relatively normal lives. And it is maddening, for the tabloids, that they have the gall to
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Sign up to our newsletter! Get free articles, selections from the archive, subscription offers and competitions delivered straight to your inbox.
http://ow.ly/zZcW50JfgN5
'Within hours, the news spread. A grimy gang of desperadoes had been captured just in time to stop them setting out on an assassination plot of shocking audacity.'
@katheder on the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/butchers-knives-treason-and-plot
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete