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.

In his 1933 masterpiece in Praise of Shadows, the Japanese essayist Junichiro Tanazaki wrote that if light is scarce, then light is scarce, we'll immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.

Well, with the long dark nights now firmly upon us, today on Open Book, and there discover its own particular beauty.

Well, with the long dark nights now firmly upon us,

today on Open Book, we'll be doing just that as we journey through graveyards, battlefields and imaginative night worlds.

Later, A.L. Kennedy burns the midnight oil

and shares her love of After Hours writing.

And we'll take a look at how the publishing industry is doing this winter,

three years after its first COVID Christmas.

But first, we travel to North Carolina via the snow-covered front line of North Korea.

Ron Rash lives in rural Appalachia and has made his name through evocative writing

about its

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