Hello and welcome to We Are History, a very exciting episode today, Angela.

Oh yes. It's a We are History first this week, John. We have got a guest.

So excited. A guest. We've got a guest. And I think we might have made a terrible mistake, John, because what we've done is we've invited like a proper bonafide

his story. Oh no. It's going to be so shown up. And they're going to show us up. Somebody who's read

more than the Lady Bird books. Oh no. Yes. So this might be the first and last time we do this.

Yes, but I think perhaps because this episode was so very much inspired by her book,

we have invited on Hallie Rubenhold, who has written a book called The Five.

We have. So this is an episode, let's get this straight from the start.

It's not an episode about Jack the Ripper, and it's not necessarily about the case, the serial killer himself.

He's not the only serial killer.

He wasn't the first.

He won't be the last.

And, well, we know he's not the last.

There's been hundreds of them.

But for some reason, Jack the Ripper has sort of entered this almost folkloric state of London history, you know, to the point where there's museums and waxwork

figures and all sorts about this sort of caped. Yes. Top-hatted villain. Exactly. Stalking the

dark streets of London. Exactly. And it's a sort of, it is like a pantomime villain and it's, you know, it took this book

from Halley to make everyone stop and go, hang on a minute.

Five women at least were murdered here.

Yeah.

So the bottom line is, this is a serial killer of women and, you know, these women died

in horrific ways,

...