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. Where do you get your ideas from is one of the questions authors hear the most.

It's one of the great mysteries of fiction, although some come by inspiration more easily than

others. Georgette Hayer, for instance, wrote nearly 60 novels in her lifetime.

A hundred years after the first, I'll be talking to novelist Harriet Evans about

Hayer's extraordinary body of work. But for others, where do you get your ideas from is a

particularly unwelcome inquiry. It's one that carries huge repercussions for the central

character in Jean Hempf Correlitz's novel, The Plot. The book centers on a struggling author, Jake,

who steals an irresistible story after one of his students dies.

But his subsequent best-selling success is marred by an anonymous threat

that his theft will be exposed

and that his long-dreamed-of success will be destroyed.

Many were the dreams of young Jacob Finch Bonner

...