It was 50 years ago this week, on 7 November 1974, that Lord Lucan fled what was destined to become the most talked about crime scene of the 20th century. A coroner’s inquest jury named him as the killer of Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny, but his disappearance ensured that he was never convicted of the crime – or of the attempted murder of his wife, Veronica.
Stripping away the sensationalism of the story needn’t render it boring
Understandably, given the mystery that still envelops his precise actions and whereabouts, Radio 4 has chosen to mark the anniversary with a soft question rather than to provide answers. Soft, but also ironic: what is it about this case that continues to obsess us? Listeners may well rehash this as: why are we trawling through this story yet again?
Thankfully, the ten-part series has a brilliant narrator in the shape of historian Alex von Tunzelmann, who ponders the case like a latter-day Agatha Christie. She doesn’t glamorise it but interrogates it with intelligence. Her characters are friends and former acquaintances of the couple; authors and journalists who were there at the time. She shows that stripping away the sensationalism needn’t render the story boring.
The incidents she describes came following the breakdown of Lord and Lady Lucan’s marriage and a bitter custody battle over their three children. The couple were living in straitened times owing to Lord Lucan’s gambling habit. They could barely afford to pay the milkman.
The third episode does a great hatchet job on the peer’s character. It appears that he frittered away much of his time and money at the Clermont Club, John Aspinall’s casino, having first caught the gambling bug at Eton.
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