Free Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller by Sean O'Connor Page B

me on the text.
    Rob Haywood has been patient, supportive and encouraging throughout the gestation and realization of this book for which I’m hugely grateful.
    My greatest debt, though, is to Melody Gardner, who has not spoken publicly about her family history for nearly seventy years. Despite the painful material, Melody has embraced the revelations I have put before her with extraordinary fortitude and open-mindedness. She has offered unique insights into three generations of Sheffield women: her redoubtable grandmother, Betty Wheat, her mother Margery Gardner and, indeed, her own life. She has encouraged the writing of this book, whilst always retaining distance from it. For me, enabling Melody to read her mother’s story from original documents, rather than filtered through biased and erroneous newspaper reports, has been a great privilege. I hope she feels that her mother’s tragic story has been told honestly, fairly and – at last – with understanding and compassion.

FURTHER READING
    Original documents relating to the investigation and trial held at the National Archives (TNA):
    HO 144/22871
    HO 144/22872
    DPP 1/1522
    DPP 1/1524
    CRIM 1/1806
    MEPO 3/2664
    MEPO 3/2728
    P COM 9/700
    In South Africa, the files relating to Heath are held at the Cape Archives and Record Service and the National Archives Repository in Pretoria, as well as at the Offices of the Master of the High Court in Cape Town and Pretoria.
Books about Heath or which discuss the case:
Brock, Sydney, The Life and Death of Neville Heath , Modern Fiction Ltd, 1947
Byrne, Gerald, Borstal Boy: The Uncensored Story of Neville Heath , Gerald Byrne, Headline, 1946
Critchley, Macdonald (ed.), The Trial of Neville George Clevely Heath , Notable British Trials series, William Hodge, 1951
Hill, Paull, Portrait of a Sadist , Neville Spearman, 1960
Selwyn, Francis, Rotten to the Core: The Life and Death of Neville Heath , Routledge, 1988
 
Adamson, Iain, The Great Detective: A Life of Deputy Commander Reginald Spooner of Scotland Yard , Frederick Muller Ltd, 1966
Bennett, Benjamin, Why Did They Do It? , Howard B. Timmins, Cape Town, 1954
Bixley, William, The Guilty and the Innocent , Souvenir Press, 1957
Casswell, J. D., A Lance for Liberty , Harrap, 1961
Fabian, Robert, London After Dark , The Naldrett Press, 1954
Hoskins, Percy, The Sound of Murder , John Long, 1973
Morland, Nigel, Hangman’s Clutch , Werner Laurie, 1954
Phillips, Conrad, Murderer’s Moon, Being Studies of Heath, Haigh, Christie and Chesney , Associated Booksellers, 1956
Pierrepoint, Albert, Executioner: Pierrepoint , Harrap, 1974
Playfair, Giles, and Sington, Derrick, Crime, Punishment and Cure , Secker & Warburg, 1965
Playfair, Giles, and Sington, Derrick, The Offenders: Society and the Atrocious Crime , The Windmill Press, 1957
Root, Neil, Frenzy! Heath, Haigh and Christie: The First Great Tabloid Murderers , Preface Publishing, 2011
Simpson, Keith, Forty Years of Murder: An Autobiography , Harrap, 1978
Thomas, Donald, Hanged in Error?, Robert Hale, 1994
Webb, Duncan, Crime Is My Business , Frederick Muller, 1953
Britain at war (and after):
Allport, Alan, Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War , Yale, 2010
Beaton, Cecil, and Pope-Hennessy, James, History Under Fire: 52 Photographs of Air Raid Damage to London Buildings, 1940–41 , B. T. Batsford, 1941
Beevor, Antony, The Second World War , Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012
Bigland, Eileen, The Story of the WRNS , Nicholson & Watson, 1946
Calder, Angus, The People’s War: Britain 1939–45 , Jonathan Cape, 1969
Costello, John, Love, Sex and War , Collins, 1985
Drummond, John D., Blue for a Girl: The Story of the WRNS , W. H. Allen, 1960
Edington, M. A., Bournemouth and the Second World War , Bournemouth Local Studies Publications, 1999
Faviell, Frances, A Chelsea Concerto , Cassell, 1959
Fussell, Paul, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War , Oxford, 1989
Gardiner, Juliet, The Blitz: The British Under Attack ,