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 Fontunzelman. This is

the Lucan Obsession. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, how has your year in reading been? Perhaps you stayed up to date and read every

prize winner and hot book of the season. Perhaps you only read the classics or fiction in translation.

Or perhaps like me, the best book you read was one that had been sitting on your shelf for a quarter

of a century, patiently waiting for you to pick it up.

Later on, we're going to hear about the years in reading had by Cape Moss and Ella Waccatama.

But first, we ask some familiar voices from Radio 4 what they've been reading in 2022.

A book I've really enjoyed this year, and I definitely also cried while reading, despite the title, is Abby Morgan's This Is Not a Pity Memoir. In it, the wonderful screenwriter normally has turned her hands writing a book about her husband falling seriously ill, and then herself falling ill, and him not recognising her, them becoming strangers to one another for a while.

But it's just so powerful. I had to read it in one day, as she read it around the radio shift,

and then on either side of my news night shift, I stayed up till three o'clock in the morning.

I couldn't put it down because it just puts life into perspective while also making

you laugh. And ultimately, despite all of the sadness and fear, it's a love story. And that's why

it stayed with me. Listening to the daily diet of doom on the news is like sitting on a beach

facing a giant wave, a news gnarmy. It's only human then to seek the higher ground.

In the pandemic, millions reached for Albert Camus' plague paper back La Pest.

Not for me, a rat-infested cholera chronicle. I picked up David Sedaris.

Having him to hand in a book felt like a shot in the arm, a doom vaccine. His latest is

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