They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

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I* - a film occasionally described as a "cult" classic (has an adjective ever been more patronising or redundant?) - and his 2011 collaboration with Depp, The Rum Diary, based on the Hunter S Thompson novel. This last was an ambitious project that, as Robinson candidly puts it, "bombed". His greatest work of prose is the 1998 novella The Peculiar Memories Of Thomas Penman, which draws on his traumatic upbringing in Broadstairs, Kent. A couple of the letters feel unconvincingly overinterpreted; for instance the commentary on the one signed 'Andy Handy', when compared with the text, sounds like too much has been read into it. Robinson becomes quite upset at times as he reveals the wretched lives of the poor Whitechapel victims - angry that more wasn't done to relieve the sufferings of the poor of that era. I completely understand his feelings but that is no reason to use the F word 500 times in anger. In fact, Robinson has quite a vulgar mouth which I found hard to believe since he looked so angelic as a youth. I still expected some commentary on the attractions of Ripper research, especially, because, including Smoking in Bed, Robinson is conscious of a need to prove himself against impossible standards, from childhood on. Here he is working for 15 years on the most notorious unsolved mystery in British history. He also has form for lengthy investigation of conspiracies, e.g. in the research for his film script about Robert Oppenheimer, Fat Man and Little Boy, aka Shadowmakers. And years earlier, he seemingly sent himself up, playing on the way researching Victorian serial killers preyed on an anxiety-prone mind, in short story Paranoia In The Launderette, later adapted without official credits as part of the film A Fantastic Fear of Everything. So I assumed similar self-deprecation would be present here: a ruthless questioning of one's own methods and the tendency to apophenia, rather than giving in to it without meticulous examination. But I'm not sure he likes writing narrative about himself directly: he talks to interviewers, he writes scripts, he used third person to write unflattering dark comedy characters based on himself, in Laundrette and The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman. Maybe memoir just isn't his thing. As a writer, surely you're familiar with elevated levels of stress. "The thing with this book was that it was like doing 12 screenplays simultaneously. Holding such an enormous study in my head was an absolute nightmare. I used to go to bed at night feeling bilious from having this awful person in my head, and the awful people who protected him."

He became chairman of the Isle of Wight Hospital, was a magistrate and was five times mayor of Ryde. He was also a Freemason. [3] He had been at Buxton for three weeks being treated for periodic gout when he died in his sleep of heart failure on 26 August 1913. [4] He was buried four days later at Ryde. A book like no other – the tale of a gripping quest to discover the identity of history’s most notorious murderer and a literary high-wire act from the legendary writer and director of Withnail and I. There's a lot of anger, I say, in this book. "If there was one thing that kept me going as I immersed myself in the filthy f***ing miasma that was British politics in the Victorian era, it was rage. I was inflamed by what they did with that little boy." As others have mentioned the language can be vulgar, but in most cases Robinson is using JTR's own words. His disdain for the ruling class and their lies and cover-ups is sometimes expressed in the form of sarcasm, and I enjoyed that. The author is passionate.. His dismissiveness of some of the more prominent "Ripperologists" is comical and also well-placed; for one thing, Robinson proves that some of the letters dismissed as hoaxes were in fact written by the killer.

Bruce Robinson: the man who found the Ripper

Didn't you once tell me Hemingway said the only thing a writer needs is an unhappy childhood? "My early life gave me a great deal to draw on. But would I have swapped a happy childhood for the writing? Yes." I hope that someone takes up the challenge, uses the author's research and theories, and writes a better book. I*. In the meantime he is braced for the recoil from Ripperologists, tetchy historians and Freemasons. The last group's contemporary members are not criticised in the book. "That," says Robinson, "would be like blaming the modern army for General Haig's blunders in the First World War." But it's an unavoidable truth that, historically, English Freemasonry has not always responded kindly to criticism. It will, Robinson hopes, not be too interesting an autumn. Robinson's stepfather, educated at Rugby, "was constantly telling me I was stupid. I thought it was normal to hear my mother scream 'Stop it, you'll kill him' while I was being bashed. I was sent to the worst secondary modern available. I had chronic asthma. Ripperology has long been a notorious crank subculture, and the online forums were fascinating to read, for a few hours, at least. By no means does everyone sound like a crank, rooting for their favourite suspect whilst ignoring holes and uncertainties in the case. Some do think the case will never be solved; some bring what looks like professional-style rigour to a micro-study (such as a recent book by a descendent of the suspect Chapman).

Pro: I accept Robinson's nominee as the actual JTR. It all makes so much more sense from this perspective. This book is a hot mess in a million ways, it hardly sets off down one gaslit Victorian alleyway before it charges off down another to chase something else entirely and I have to admit, there were more than a few moments when I wasn’t entirely sure what we were talking about. But I was willing to follow Bruce Robinson (arguably the hottest one from the ‘60s Romeo and Juliet movie) on his big crazy journey and I’m glad I did. I kind of couldn’t tear myself away from this even in its most wtf moments.Best of all is the relation of content in various letters to one another, and playing with words and phrases and oblique allusions. The textual analysis and psychology is rather awesome. Although I think we could have done with systematic mentions of which bits riffed on letters that had been published in newspapers. Drawings in two different letters are quite obviously by the same hand. Last time I stayed with Robinson he had no idea of the identity of his birth father. Now he has a photograph of the American and says he's just discovered two half-sisters living in the US.