Untitled

Author: Thomas Harding

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $50.00 NZD
  • : 9781785151040
  • : Cornerstone
  • : William Heinemann Ltd
  • :
  • :
  • : August 2017
  • : 240mm X 156mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 50.0
  • : September 2017
  • :
  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

  • :
  • :
  • : Thomas Harding
  • :
  • : Hardback
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • : 364.1523
  • :
  • :
  • : 352
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
Barcode 9781785151040
9781785151040

Description

A groundbreaking examination of a terrifying murder and its aftermath by the bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake. In June 2006, police were called to number 9 Downshire Hill in Hampstead to investigate reports of unusual card activity. The owner of the house, Allan Chappelow, was an award-winning photographer and biographer, an expert on George Bernard Shaw, and a notorious recluse, who had not been seen for several weeks. Someone had recently accessed his bank accounts, and attempted to withdraw large amounts of money. Inside the darkened house officers found piles of rubbish, trees growing through the floor, and, in what was once the living room, the body of Chappelow, battered to death, partially burned and buried under four feet of paper. The man eventually convicted of his murder was a Chinese dissident named Wang Yam: a man who claimed to be the grandson of one of Mao's closest aides, and a key negotiator in the Tiananmen Square protests. His trial was the first in modern British history to be held 'in camera': closed, carefully controlled, secret. Wang Yam has always protested his innocence.
Thomas Harding has spent the past two years investigating the case, interviewing key witnesses, the investigating officers, forensic experts, and the journalists who broke the story, and has unearthed shocking and revelatory new material on the killing, the victim and the supposed perpetrator. It is a story that has been described in the press and by the leading detective as 'the greatest whodunnit' of recent years: an extraordinary tale of isolation, deception, espionage and brutal violence, stretching from the quiet streets of north London to the Palace of Westminster and beyond. It is an explosive new work of non-fiction from an author working at the height of his powers.

Author description

Thomas Harding is an author and journalist who has written for the Financial Times, the Sunday Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, among other publications. He co-founded a television station in Oxford, England, and for many years was an award-winning documentary maker. He also ran a local newspaper in West Virginia, winning the West Virginia Association of Justice's Journalist of the Year Award, before moving back to England in 2011, where he now lives with his family. He is the author of Hanns and Rudolf, a Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the JQ-Wingate Prize; the internationally acclaimed Kadian Journal: A Father's Story; and The House by the Lake, a Costa Biography Award and Orwell Prize nominee.