The Cruel Mother: A Family Ghost Laid to Rest - Tapa blanda

"Sian Busby's deeply felt and well researched book is a tale of awful enchantment." Erica Wagner, The Times; "Fascinating, part autobiography, part moving family history, with sharply etched portraits richly embedded in their social and historical milieu." Caroline Moore, Sunday Telegraph; "A gripping tale of madness and infanticide during the time of the Great War... Powerful and disturbing." Margaret Forster"

In 1919 Sian Busby's great-grandmother, Beth, gave birth to triplets. One of the babies died at birth and eleven days later she drowned the surviving twins in a bath of cold water. She was sentenced to an indefinite term of imprisonment at Broadmoor. The murder and the deep sense of shame it generated obviously affected Beth, her husband and their surviving children to an extraordinary degree, but it also resounded through the lives of her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. In Sian's case, ill-suppressed knowledge of the event manifested itself in recurring nightmares and contributed towards a prolonged bout of post-natal depression. After the birth of her second son, she decided to investigate the story once and for all and lay to rest the ghosts which have haunted the family for 80 years...