#WigtownWednesdays | Hallie Rubenhold

Hallie Rubenhold ~ The Five

Wednesday 3 June
7pm, via Zoom

This event is now over. Watch the video above.

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Number one Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize 2019, Hallie Rubenhold joined us for a #WigtownWednesday live event. She talked to Lee Randall about The Five, her superb riposte to the Jack the Ripper myth.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.

What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. Their murderer was never identified, but the name created for him by the press has become far more famous than any of these five women. In this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, and gives these women back their stories.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2020
HAY FESTIVAL BOOK OF THE YEAR

“An angry and important work of historical detection, calling time on the misogyny that has fed the Ripper myth. Powerful and shaming,” Guardian

“Gripping,” New York Times

“Devastatingly good. ‘The Five’ will leave you in tears, of pity and of rage,” Lucy Worsley

“Dignity is finally returned to these unfortunate women,” Professor Dame Sue Black