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.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Hello, we have a rare gift for you in today's program.

Claire Keegan publishes so seldom, and her new book, arriving just in time for Christmas,

is soaked in the atmosphere of the season.

That evening, when they got home, Eileen said it was well past time they made the Christmas

cake.

Goodumerably, she took down her Addlem's recipe and got furlong to cream a pound of butter

and sugar in the brown dulfed bowl with the hand mixer while the girls grated lemon rind,

weighed and chopped candied peel and cherries, soaked whole almonds in boiled water,

and slipped them from their skins. But not everything is so cosy in the small Irish town where

Bill Furlong lives with his wife and daughters. And if winter is for some of us when we enjoy

the warmth of the hearth, it's also a time to be mindful of those

for whom this is an altogether harsher season.

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