Latest Book: The Churchfield Murder This remarkable and tragic story has all the elements of a fictional murder mystery, but it is all true. The year 1905, a small hamlet in deepest rural Kent, the body of a man abandoned in a meadow with his throat cut from ear to ear and his skull caved in, a band of Algerian hawkers in the area, Kent’s best homicide detective leading the case, a painstaking investigation and manhunt, national newspaper coverage, a sensational false confession, a misdirected trial, and a cast of real 1905 villagers as witnesses. What more could you want in a true murder mystery? “Of all the places in the world, the little Kentish village of St Michaels near Tenterden would be the last place with which one would associate the strange and ghastly discovery that was made there on Sunday afternoon.” The Daily Chronicle. June 1905 Who was this victim who had laid there for 30 hours undiscovered? Who killed him in such a savage way and why? Drawing on a wealth o
When we think of the war horses during the remembrance period we tend to overlook the men who risked their lives to safeguard and care for them , particularly while in action at the front. These men not only witnessed the horrors of their human comrades being killed and mutilated but also their equine comrades. My grandfather Edwin Clark was one of these men . Men were often killed caring for their beloved horses. At about 6 p.m. on the evening of the 30 th . September 1918 my grandfather Edwin Clark and his fellow artillery drivers of the 13 th . Battery Canadian Field Artillery were “feeding-up” and watering their war horses at the wagon and horse line a mile back from the front line near the town of Raillencourt. Suddenly they heard an aircraft approaching. It was a German plane and before they could take cover it dropped some newly invented “Daisy-Clipper” bombs into the middle of the horse lines. They were designed to explode a few inches from the ground throwing