On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.

It was an extraordinary news story.

The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,

mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.

One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for Lucan.

It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime.

I'm Alex von Tundselman.

This is The Lucan Obsession.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Hello, joining me today, Damien Barr, writer and broadcaster, author of the award-winning memoir Maggie and me,

and most recently a debut novel. You will be safe here. Damien's TV programmes include the

big Scottish book club, now in its fourth series, and is the creator and host of the worldwide

Literary Salon. With him is Ben Ferguson, whose trilogy of novels set in the same Berlin apartment

block at different times in the 20th century, culminated in 2019's An Honest Man. This summer, Ben

published his first non-fiction book Tales from the Fatherland, based on his own experience

and subtitled Two Dads, One Ad one adoption and the meaning of parenthood.

Damien Barr, would you start us off? What is your choice of a good read?

Well, this is a book that really changed my life as a reader and as a writer. It's the memoir or anti-memoir all made up by Janice Galloway.

It's her second, I think there are only two, and it's her

memoir of growing up in the west of Scotland, working class childhood in saltcoats, which is on the

coast, and it's about her life. At this point she's living with her mother and her sister,

Cora, who's the sort of glamorous anti-hero

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