Non-Fiction Books

The Wigwam Murder - as the case against August Sangret came to be known - was one of the most brilliant pieces of detection and forensic science then on record. Drs Keith Simpson, Eric Gardner and Gerald Roche Lynch worked together to present a comprehensive body of work that convinced and shocked the jury. It was the first time that a human skull had been produced in a British court room. It belonged to Joan Pearl Wolfe, a nineteen-year-old runaway and vagrant who hung around Canadian army camps, particularly in the Hankley Common, Surrey, area. The man who went to the gallows in April 1943 for the capital crime of murder was August Sangret, a French-Canadian Metis Indian. Despite the amazing forensic work, the evidence against him was purely circumstantial. 'No, sir. I never killed that girl. Somebody did it and I guess I will have to take the rap,' he said. In this compassionate re-telling of the short and tragic relationship between the two young misfits, M J Trow builds on his reputation as a chronicler of human failings and bringer of the light of day into the cold pragmatism of the courtroom. With a foreword and afterword to give the 21st century reader some additional insight into both the time of the murder and the time of the original research of twenty years ago, this book is a gripping and at times heartrending tale of two lost people in a world torn by war.

Presents the people, places, and theories connected to the mystery of Jack the Ripper with a psychological profile of the killer

Kit Marlowe was the bad boy of the Elizabethan drama, a schemer and player who inhabited a seamy underworld in which plots proliferated. When he died, stabbed through the eye at 29, it seemed he had met with the death that had been coming to him. But is this the whole story? Or did he know too much about those in power and so had to be expunged? This investigation of Marlowe's death - and the life which provoked it - unravels the evidence to suggest a new answer to a murder which has puzzled us over four centuries. Author of 'Tambourlaine', 'The Jew of Malta', and 'Doctor Faustus', Marlowe was the leading literary light of his generation. But while he excited admiration, he also made powerful enemies. For Marlowe had also become involved in a world of spies and counter-spies, and developed perilous interests in alchemy, witchcraft and the School of the Night. This work gives an insight into Marlowe's complex world.

Layers of myth and history are peeled back to reveal the real Vlad the Impaler.

This vivid and bloodthirsty tale explores the true story of the woman who took on the might of the greatest power of the ancient world and nearly drove it out of part of its empire.

Canute is famous today as the bad king arrogant enough to believe he could stem the tide. This book peals back the layers of legend and mythmaking to reveal the true history of King Canute and the kingdom he ruled. England in Canute's time was made up of seven Saxon kingdoms which had been ravaged by raids for decades. Already king of Denmark by 1014, Canute was one of three claimants for the English throne and on the face of it, the least likely to succeed. The others were the occupant, Ethelred and Edmund - known as Ironside - Ethelred's eldest son. Two years of in-fighting among the three combatants followed, with the timely and suspicious deaths of both his rivals ensuring Canute was the undisputed first Danish king of England. Canute had achieved power but he had yet to win the hearts and minds of Englishmen so he married their queen, Emma, widow of Ethelred and perhaps 20 years older than him. By this, Canute assured an Anglo-Danish succession, burying the hatchet after a century of war and violence. Safe in the knowledge that England was loyal, Canute embarked on an ambitious, bloody and successful foreign policy. When he died he was the most powerful king in Europe except the Holy Roman Emperor and England was a united nation.

Today, knowledge of the gladiator-slave Spartacus comes mostly from the 1960 Kirk Douglas epic. This exciting book traces the story of Spartacus from early slavehood to the legends which still surround his name.

William Morris was in the front rank during the Charge of the Light Brigade. He was one of the first horsemen to reach the Russian guns. This is his story. M.J. Trow's vivid biography of this typical Victorian soldier gives a fascinating insight into the officer class that fought the Crimean War. In recording Morris's experiences during a notorious campaign, the author reveals much about the hidebound character of the British army of that era. The portraits of Morris's fellow officers and commanders - men like Nolan, Raglan and Lucan - are telling, as is the contrast between Morris and his incompetent superior Cardigan. The author meticulously recreates Morris's life and, through him, the lives of a generation of professional British soldiers.

Rodrigo Diaz was one of countless warlords in 11th century Spain. Why, then, was an epic film starring Charlton Heston made about the man known as El Cid? Why is he Spain's national hero and why is his statue in New York? M.J. Trow peals back layers of legend to reveal the real man and the icon he has become.

The Second World War was a defining experience in British history. It shaped us, made us what we are, and we are still fascinated by it. And one of the most extraordinary aspects of this unique war was the effect it had on crime - and this is the focus of M.J. Trow's compelling survey. He does not write solely about servicemen who committed crime - although there were many of them - and he does not celebrate heroes. On the contrary, his account highlights the un-heroic, the weak and the corrupt. And it draws attention to something perhaps uniquely British - the will of the people to cope, be it housewives with rationing, the police with the black market or magistrates all too aware that 'careless talk costs lives'. The war may have been Britain's finest hour, but during it there were many dark moments which M.J. Trow explores in his intriguing study.

For a hundred and twenty years, the identity of the Whitechapel murderer known to us as Jack the Ripper has both eluded us and spawned a veritable industry of speculation. This book names him. Mad doctors, Russian lunatics, bungling midwives, railway policemen, failed barristers, weird artists, royal princes and white-eyed men. All of these and more have been put in the frame for the Whitechapel murders. Where ingenious invention and conspiracy theories have failed, common sense has floated out of the window. M.J. Trow, in this gripping historical reinvestigation, cuts through the fog of speculation, fantasy and obsession that has concealed the identity of the most famous serial murderer of all time.

With the phenomenal success of the Twilight series and the popularity of shows like True Blood on HBO, vampires continue to be embedded in popular culture. Vampires have haunted readers and movie lovers for centuries and have been interpreted in every genre since. M. J. Trow charts the whole phenomena from its origins, depicting the story of warrior-prince Vlad of Wallachia (aka Dracula), who defended Europe against the Muslim invaders in fifteenth-century Europe.

A Brief History of Cleopatra draws on recent archaeological finds and fresh interpretations of ancient texts to separate truth from myth to set this incomparably beautiful queen in context.

On 1 May 1820, outside Newgate Prison, in front of a dense crowd, five of the Cato Street conspirators - Arthur Thistlewood, William Davidson, James Ings, Richard Tidd and John Brunt - were hanged for high treason. Then they were decapitated in the last brutal act of a murderous conspiracy that aimed to assassinate Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and his cabinet and destroy his government. The Cato Street conspirators matched the Gunpowder plotters in their daring - and in their fate - but their dark, radical intrigue hasn’t received the attention it deserves. M.J. Trow, in this gripping fast-moving account of this notorious but neglected episode in British history, reconstructs the case in vivid detail and sets it in the wider context of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

Sir Samuel White Baker is one of those larger-than-life heroes only the Victorians could invent. For too long, the British Empire has been denigrated and equated with arrogance at best and racial bigotry at worst. Samuel Baker transcends that. He was an explorer and naturalist, recording new species on his many travels; a big game hunter with huge expertise across continents; an engineer of skill and ingenuity; a general of ability; an administrator second to none; and an ardent opponent of African slavery. M. J. Trow, in this the first biography of Baker for twenty years, draws heavily on Baker’s prolific writings to bring the extraordinary character of this Victorian adventurer and his achievements to life.

Dismembered corpses are discovered scattered along the banks of the river Thames, a calculating clinical multiple murderer is on the loose, and the London police have no inkling of the killer’s identity – and, more than a century later, they still don’t. In this, M.J. Trow’s latest reinvestigation of a bizarre and brutal serial killing, he delves deep into the appalling facts of the case, into the futile police investigations, and into the dark history of late Victorian London. The incredible criminal career of the Thames torso murderer has gripped readers and historians ever since he committed his crimes in the 1870s and 1880s. The case poses as many questions as the even more notorious killings of Jack the Ripper. How, over a period of fifteen years, did the Thames murderer get away with a succession of monstrous and sensational misdeeds? And what sort of perverted character was he, why did he take such risks, why did he kill again and again?

The mysteries surrounding Britain’s 7th earl of Lucan have endured for almost four decades. In 1974, after his carefully crafted plan to murder his wife went awry, he killed his nanny by mistake, and then attacked his wife ─ all while his three children were in the house. If it happened today, everyone with access to the Internet and TV would be inundated for months with the contradictory details of this bizarre story and how the dashing aristocrat became the subject of a worldwide manhunt. In 1974, England was still very focused on the perks afforded the titled rich. To add insult to murder, the focus of the case moved from the dead nanny and injured wife to the whereabouts of the earl, who disappeared shortly after the attacks. While the police analyzed the evidence, friends and relatives of the missing earl closed ranks and obstructed the investigation. Those same aristocratic friends may have helped get him out of the country and may know where he — or his body — is today. M. J. Trow, British author of the Lestrade, Peter “Mad Max” Maxwell, and the brand-new and very well-received Kit Marlowe detective series, as well as nonfiction books on important historical figures, presents the astonishing details of this case. Trow also analyzes what likely happened the night of the murder and the fate of the missing earl. Combining his talents as a storyteller and the objectivity of a historian, Trow leads us into the opulent sanctuaries of England’s aristocracy, suddenly violated by a despicable crime.

Who was Inspector Frederick Abberline, the lead detective in the Jack the Ripper case? Why did he and his fellow policemen fail to catch the most notorious serial killer of Victorian England? What was he like as a man, as a professional policeman, one of the best detectives of his generation? And how did he investigate the sequence of squalid, bloody murders that repelled and fascinated contemporaries and has been the subject of keen controversy ever since? Here at last in M.J. Trow s compelling biography of this pre-eminent Victorian policeman are the answers to these intriguing questions. Abberline s story gives us insight into his remarkable career, into the routines of Victorian policing, and into the Ripper case as it was seen by the best police minds of the day.

In September 1939, much military slang still dated to the trenches of 1914-18 - for instance words such as 'Berthas' (meaning big breasts), taken from the German Big Bertha gun . But World War II soon gave birth to a new wave of armed forces slang such as 'wizard prang', D.S.O (Dick Shot Off), and bazookas (back to breasts again). Some British terms came from the army's links with India, for instance 'zig-zig' or 'jig-jig' meaning sexual intercourse. Officers' euphemisms had to be acceptable in the Mess, for instance to 'lose one's cherry', 'extra-curricular activities', 'naval engagements' and 'dishonourable discharge'. The Americans were over-paid, over-sexed and over here and brought new slang with them: 'nugget' for a girl, 'on the rag' meant having a period and 'cheesecake' was GI slang for a gorgeous girl. And this was People's War, with civilians, women and children effectively in the front line. Women in particular were smoking, drinking, dancing and swearing like no female generation before...

In 1945, John Randall was the first Allied officer to enter Bergen-Belsen - the concentration camp that would reveal the horrors of the Holocaust to the world. Now in his 90s, Randall was one of that league of extraordinary gentlemen handpicked for suicidally dangerous missions behind enemy lines in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany throughout the Second World War. He was a man of his class and of his times. He hated the Germans, liked the French and was unimpressed by the Americans and the Arabs. He was an outrageous flirt, as might be expected of a man who served in Phantom alongside film stars David Niven and Hugh Williams. He played rugby with Paddy Mayne, the larger-than-life colonel of the SAS and winner of four DSOs. He pushed Randolph Churchill, son of the Prime Minister, out of an aeroplane. He wined and dined in nightclubs as part of the generation that lived for each day because they might not see another. This extraordinary true story, partly based on previously unpublished diaries, presents a different slant on that mighty war through the eyes of a restless young man eager for action and adventure.

In July 1940, Walter Schellenberg of the German Secret Service drew up a list of 2,694 people believed to be living in Britain, who were known enemies of the Reich. In that month, the Wehrmacht was poised across the Channel ready to hit Britain with blitzkrieg, the terrible and hugely successful tactic that had already overwhelmed Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France. The names on Schellenberg’s list represent the heart and soul of a nation that made the British what they were but the List also includes a diaspora from Europe—the intellectuals, politicians, and writers who had been driven out of their own homelands by the speed of the German conquests. All human life is there—lives that were, to the Nazis, unworthy of life. Historians have found the List a curiosity. Surely, it cannot be real? It was. The Black Book is the first book to evaluate the list, and look at the chilling reality of what Hitler had in store for the nation.

In the autumn of 1888, a series of grisly murders took place in Whitechapel in London’s East End, the Abyss, the Ghetto, the City of Eternal Night. The Whitechapel murderer, arguably the first of his kind, was never caught but the killings gave rise to the best known pen-name in criminal history – Jack the Ripper. The Whitechapel killer was terrifyingly real but Jack was the creation of Fleet Street, the gallows humour of a newspaper hack whose sole aim in life was to sell newspapers. And where the ‘Dear Boss’ letter, with its ‘trade name’ signature led, thousands followed. This book is not about the world’s first serial killer but about the sick, the perverted, the twisted souls who put pen to paper purporting to be the killer or suggested ever more lurid ways in which he could be caught. Innocent men were put in the frame by Victorian trouble-makers who would be perfectly at home with today’s Internet trolls, pointing cruel fingers in almost perfect anonymity. The book takes the lid off Victorian mindsets, exposing a dark and unnatural place as topsy-turvy as that inhabited by the killer himself.

Explores Richard III’s controversial life, focusing on his deep ties to Northern England. Richard III is England’s most controversial king. Forever associated with the murder of his nephews, the Princes in the Tower, he divides the nation. As spectacular as his death at Bosworth in August 1485 – the last king of England to die in battle – the astonishing discovery of his bones under a Leicester car park five centuries later renewed interest in him and reopened old debates. Is he the world’s most wicked uncle; or is he (in the words of the man who most smeared him) ‘a prince more sinned against than sinning’? Richard was not born in the North; neither did he die there, but this detailed look at his life, tracing his steps over the thirty-three years that he lived, focuses on the area that he loved and made his own. As Lord of the North, he had castles at Middleham and Sheriff Hutton, Penrith and Sandal. He fought the Scots along the northern border and on their own territory. His son was born at Middleham and was invested as Prince of Wales at York Minster, where Richard planned to set up a college of 100 priests. His white boar device can be found in obscure corners of churches and castles; his laws, framed in the single parliament of his short reign, gave rights to the people who served him and loved him north of the Trent. And when he felt threatened or outnumbered by his enemies during the turbulent years of the Wars of the Roses, it was to the men of the North that he turned for support and advice. They became his knights of the body; members of the Council of the North which outlived Richard by a 150 years. They died with him at Bosworth. Although we cannot divorce Richard from the violent politics of the day or from events that happened far to the South, it was in the North that Richard’s heart lay. The North was his home. It was the place he loved.

The disappearance of two boys during the summer of 1483 has never been satisfactorily explained. They were Edward, Prince of Wales, nearly thirteen at the time, and his brother, Richard of York, nearly ten. With their father, Edward IV, dying suddenly at forty, both boys had been catapulted into the spotlight of fifteenth-century politics, which was at once bloody and unpredictable. Thanks to the work of the hack ‘historians’ who wrote for Henry VII, the first Tudor, generations grew up believing that the boys were murdered and that the guilty party was their wicked uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Richard crowned himself King of England in July 1483, at which time the boys were effectively prisoners in the Tower of London. After that, there was no further sign of them. Over the past 500 years, three men in particular have been accused of the boys’ murders – Richard of Gloucester; Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond; and Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. The evidence against them would not stand up in a court of law today, but the court of history is much less demanding and most fingers remain pointed squarely at Richard of Gloucester. This book takes a different approach, the first to follow this particular line of enquiry. It is written as a police procedural, weighing up the historical evidence without being shackled to a particular ‘camp’. The supposition has always been made that the boys were murdered for political reasons. But what if that is incorrect? What if they died for other reasons entirely? What if their killer had nothing to gain politically from their deaths at all? And, even more fascinatingly, what if the princes in the Tower were not the only victims?

‘Glory to each and to all, and the charge that they made! Glory to all three hundred, and all the Brigade!’ Everyone has heard of the charge of the Light Brigade, a suicidal cavalry attack caused by confused orders which somehow sums up the Crimean War (1854-6). Far less well known is what happened an hour earlier, when General Scarlett’s Heavy Brigade charged a Russian army at least three times its size. That ‘fight of heroes’, to use the phrase of William Russell, the world’s first war correspondent, was a brilliant success, whereas the Light Brigade’s action resulted in huge casualties and achieved nothing. This is the first book by a military historian to study the men of the Heavy Brigade, from James Scarlett, who led it, to the enlisted men who had joined for the ‘queen’s shilling’ and a new life away from the hard grind of Victorian poverty. It charts the perils of travelling by sea, in cramped conditions with horses panicking in rough seas. It tells the story, through the men who were there, of the charge itself, where it was every man for himself and survival was down to the random luck of shot and shell. It looks, too, at the women of the Crimea, the wives who accompanied their menfolk. Best known were Florence Nightingale, the ‘lady with the lamp’ and Mary Seacole, the Creole woman who was ‘doctress and mother’ to the men. But there were others, like Fanny Duberly who wrote a graphic journal and Mrs Rogers, who dutifully cooked and cleaned for the men of her husband’s regiment, the 4th Dragoon Guards.