Handsome Brute: Story of a Ladykiller

In the summer of 1946, the sadistic murders of the charming but deadly ex-RAF playboy Neville Heath shocked post-war Britain to the core. Details of the killings made grisly headlines in the tabloids, spawning a number of sensationalised accounts that later influenced Alfred Hitchcock and the novelist Patrick Hamilton.

In the summer of 1946, the sadistic murders of the charming but deadly ex-RAF playboy Neville Heath shocked post-war Britain to the core. Details of the killings made grisly headlines in the tabloids, spawning a number of sensationalised accounts that later influenced Alfred Hitchcock and the novelist Patrick Hamilton.

Against the backdrop of a society in flux, a culture at a moment of change, how much is Heath's case symptomatic, or indeed, emblematic of the age he lived in? Handsome Brute is both an examination of the age of austerity, and a real-life thriller as shocking and provocative as American Psycho or The Killer Inside Me, exploring the perspectives of the women in Heath's life - his wife, his mother, his lovers - and his victims.

Copies of Handsome Brute will be on sale on the night.

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