The Damnation of John Donellan

This is the non-fiction account of a miscarriage of justice in 1780, when the heir to a family fortune died in mysterious circumstances. The research for this took Elizabeth all over England, and she was fortunate enough to be given access to previously unseen family archives as well as those in the public domain. Using the original trial transcript, Elizabeth uncovered a truly astonishing web of family in-fighting, and of a fight to the death between mother and son-in-law. Was John Donellan actually guilty of the poisoning of his wife’s dissolute brother, or was there another explanation? The Times reviewed this book as ‘…a masterpiece.