Earth to Earth
Lives and Violent Deaths of a Devon Farming Family: A True Crime Classic Revisited
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Quercus Publishing
Published:10th Apr '25
Should be back in stock very soon
On Tuesday morning, 23rd September 1975, the corpses of three unmarried siblings, last surviving members of the ancient Luxton clan of Winkleigh, North Devon, were found on their remote farm. All three had had their heads blown off. Robbie's cheeks and neck had been stabbed; Frances had a broken leg. Strangely, each of the four doors to the house had been locked from the inside.
The Luxtons' idyllic farm on a stretch of lush countryside between Exmoor and Dartmoor had been lovingly tended with outdated methods. There were rumours of a thwarted betrothal, wrangles over money and property, generational feuds in the extended family, bouts of insanity and extreme miserliness.
John Cornwell's classic investigation into the violent deaths of these unhappy siblings told a story of a farming family struggling under unbearable practical and emotional pressures, their violent deaths, the police investigation and the proceedings of the inquest. The official verdict was that there had been a suicide pact, but Cornwell decided to revisit the evidence forty years after Earth to Earth was first published, and he finds that there were anomalies in the evidence suggesting alternative, criminal scenarios, and the misery that preceded these savage deaths suggested even darker elements.
Were the Luxtons scapegoats of local malice, or victims of a murderous family conflict, stricken by a dire ancestral curse?
This new edition of a true crime classic includes a postscript in which the author describes the extraordinary lengths that the great poet Ted Hughes, a neighbour of the Luxtons, went to try and suppress publication of the book.
Cornwell approaches it with the tenacity of an investigative journalist, the sympathy of a social worker drawing up case notes and the descriptive capacity of a novelist. What differentiates his book from the mass of true life crime stories is its insistence on making vivid for us not only the loud horror of the Luxtons' deaths, but the 40 years of claustrophobic rage, bred in silence, that preceded them * New York Times *
Exceptional true crime in the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a forensic examination of three mysterious killings but also an utterly absorbing portrait of a family, a region and a way of life.The new coda about Ted Hughes and the publication of the original book, fascinating in itself, adds a new, unsettling dimension to the whole story. A rich, compelling and powerful book. -- Simon Mason
John Cornwell marries the cool-headed forensic skills of the investigative journalist with the warmth and humanity of a true storyteller. The result is an utterly absorbing account of this great tragedy, revealing the many smaller, day-to-day tragedies which set a country family on the path to such a savage end. -- Ed Stourton
On first reading, a gripping true crime unravels before the reader; at a deeper level, it is a profound meditation on truth, reality, and what can, ultimately, be known. An instant classic. -- Judith Flanders
Earth to Earth is both chilling and thrilling, telling a mysterious story of the sequestered lives and tragic deaths of a Devon farming family. The account of the poet Ted Hughes's efforts to suppress the book will come as no surprise to anyone with reservations about this self-appointed shaman - a word only one syllable longer than 'sham'. -- John Banville
ISBN: 9781529441963
Dimensions: 242mm x 162mm x 30mm
Weight: 440g
256 pages