A Fine Day for a Hanging

'I know that I am going to die, and I'm ready to do so. You won't hear anything from me that says I didn't kill David. I did kill him. And whatever the circumstances you as a lawyer will appreciate that it's a life for a life. Isn't that just?' - Ruth Ellis, one day prior to her execution During the Easter weekend of 1955, former nightclub manageress Ruth Ellis shot her lover, racing car enthusiast David Blakely. Three months later, following a trial that lasted less than two days, she was found guilty and sentenced to death. Her execution was carried out in Holloway by Albert Pierrepoint and has become the most notorious of his 'duties.' Despite Ruth's infamy as the last woman to be hanged in Britain, the story of her life has never been fully told; often willfully misinterpreted, the reality behind the headlines was lost in an avalanche of hearsay, and repeatedly used as a means of exploring attitudes to women, class and capital punishment. More recently, it has been claimed that Ruth was part of a spy ring and innocent of the murder charge, with the fatal bullets fired by her other lover, Desmond Cussen. Through comprehensive research into previously unpublished sources and new interviews, A Fine Day for a Hanging examines the reality without agenda or sensation, setting Ruth's unarguably gripping story firmly in historical context in order to tell the truth about her timeless crime - and a punishment was very much of its time. It is also a portrait of the era and an evocation of 1950s London club-life in all its seedy glamour.