Stephen Bates
Teenage Kicks
The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
By Kate Summerscale
Bloomsbury 378pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
If anyone bears responsibility for the spate of Victorian true-crime books in recent years, it is Kate Summerscale, whose 2008 bestseller, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, appeared out of the blue and sold more than 800,000 copies. Others had written about that particular case, the Road Hill House murder of 1860, but none of them had hit the publishing spot quite so sensationally. Since then virtually every notorious 19th-century British murder has been exhumed, anatomised and analysed, but none of us has managed to reach such heights.
Now Summerscale is back with another, more obscure story about two boys who murdered their mother, Emily, in Plaistow, east London, in the hot summer of 1895 while their father was away at sea. Robert Coombes, who was thirteen and actually did the deed, and his twelve-year-old brother, Nathaniel, spent
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
'Lamb has always attracted admirers ... Yet, as Eric G Wilson observes, "Dream-Child" is the first full-scale biography in over a century.'
Edward Weech on the life and work of Charles Lamb.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-man-with-the-golden-pun
My latest children's round up for @Lit_Review feat. @LissaKEvans WISHED, @MissDePlume SMALL!, @skyemc_kenna's HEDGWITCH, @emmac2603 ESCAPE... @PhilipPullman's IMAGINATION...
https://literaryreview.co.uk/there-be-giants
Very happy to make my @Lit_Review debut with a review of @WillWiles "The Last Blade Priest" a fast-paced story set in an immersive world with nuanced inter-group dynamics and humane characters
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mountain-duel