You're listening to the LLB podcast. I'm Malin Hay, an assistant at the LLB.

Joining me today is James Ladsden, a novelist, screenwriter and poet, whose most recent book is the novel Afternoon of a Fawn.

He's also written several pieces for the LRB, on Las Vegas, police procedurals, and the Westborough Baptist Church, among other things.

He has a piece of the current issue of the paper, reviewing a book by Richard White called Who Killed

Jane Stanford, a gilded age tale of murder, deceit, spirits and the birth of a university,

which we're going to talk about today.

Hello, James. Thanks very much for joining me.

Thanks so much for inviting me.

So Jane Stanford was the co-founder of Stanford University, who in 1905 was murdered and her murder was never solved, or perhaps not until now.

When she was on holiday in Hawaii, she drank some bicarbonate of soda that turned out to be laced with strychnine.

There were quite a few people who could have done the murder, but before we get on to that, James, would you just start by telling me who Jane

Stanford was and why the Stanford's decided to set up a university yes the

Stanford's Jane and Lee then Stanford were this immensely wealthy

gilded age couple Leland Stanford made his money through the the Central Pacific Railroad and then I think the South also.

He apparently wasn't a very good businessman himself. He sort of got lucky, but they made it an absolute fortune.

And they had one son, Leeland Jr., who they were devoted to, seems to have been a little bit of a prodigy, or certainly they thought he was.

And they would travel with him in great style through Europe,

and he was known to sort of, he spoke fluent French,

and he would sort of lecture these eminent painters on how to paint.

And he collected various sort of artifacts and bric-a-brac

as a child. And then at the age of 15, he died of typhoid in Florence. And his parents were

distraught, very, very upset. They were devoted to him, and they were also

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