John Sutherland

Wilkie Collins by Andrew Lycett – review

A Punch caricature of Wilkie Collins, emphasising his sensationalism. Credit: The Bridgeman Art Library 
issue 21 September 2013

In the outrageous 2010 press hounding of the innocent schoolteacher Christopher Jefferies over the murder of his young female tenant (of which a neighbour, Vincent Tabak, was later convicted and over which the guilty newspapers later shelled out punitive sums), the Sun produced, as suspicious facts, that Jefferies was ‘obsessed by death’, and ‘scared the kids’ in his classroom.

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