4 Books: Bruce Robinson

In 4 Books, we ask an author to answer 4 questions on the books that made them — on those books that made a significant impact at distinct junctures of their lives. It might be the book that guided them through a break up, the one that they press urgently into a friends’ hand, the book that best articulates love, or the book that opened up the world in a startling new way. Reading has a unique power to universalise the most private of experiences, and the books we turn to can reveal more about ourselves than we think. In 4 Books, we use literature to glimpse the inner life of our authors. Our guest today is Bruce Robinson, the legendary director and screenwriter of Withnail and I. His new book, They All Love Jack: Busting The Ripper, is out now, published by 4th Estate Books. For over a hundred years, ‘the mystery of Jack the Ripper’ has been a source of unparalleled fascination and horror, spawning an army of obsessive theorists, and endless volumes purporting finally to reveal the identity of the brutal murderer who terrorised Victorian England. But what if there was never really any ‘mystery’ at all? What if the Ripper was always hiding in plain sight, deliberately leaving a trail of clues to his identity for anyone who cared to look, while cynically mocking those who were supposedly attempting to bring him to justice?

You can listen to 4 Books: Bruce Robinson online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

4 Books: Bruce Robinson is an episode from 4th Estate Books by 4th Estate Books.

This episode is 00:07:14 long.

This episode was published on Oct 7, 2015.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from 4th Estate Books when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.