McArandy Was Hanged on the Gibbet High

The McArandy brothers, Jack and Ethelred, should have led charmed lives. Good-looking, charming and with a rare musical ability, they captivate their Spitalfields neighbours and are about to become famous throughout the city when their father's drunken violence towards their mother causes them to commit their first heinous crime together. Ethelred is shattered to discover that the murder of their father is not his elder brother's first, and from then onwards their relationship is fraught, though inextricably and tragically entwined.

Jack's crimes became so outrageous that even his staunchest friends in the London underworld eventually testify against him and, inevitably, he fetches up at Tyburn. Like him or loathe him, Eleanor Berry's "hero" is authentically drawn and she has memorably placed him his historical context.