All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper by Bruce Robinson

[richardh]

Bruce Robinson: Creator of Withnail and I on his new book about Jack the Ripper.

"Robinson completed the most ambitious project of his career, a 1,000-page book about Jack the Ripper. They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper will be published by Harper Collins in September. "

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/bruce-robinson-creator-of-withnail-and-i-on-his-new-book-about-jack-the-ripper-10286668.html

[gnote]

I'm going to assume his suspect is yet another one from the upper crust with ties to the masons/royal family etc.

[GUT]

We'll just have to wait and see.

But another "solved" please..

[pinkmoon]

If this books starting point is the ripper diary then we are in trouble.

[HH Munro]

I've found two different versions of the blurb for the book, one which suggests might be heading for the 'there was no killer, it was just the press creating a story' theory, and one which appears to say there is a specific culprit...

Firstly, on the Harper US pr site:

http://pr.harpercollins.com/books/They-All-Love-Jack-Bruce-Robinson/?isbn=9780062296375

The iconoclastic writer and director of the revered classic Withnail & I—"The funniest British film of all time" (Esquire)—returns to London in a decade-long examination of the most provocative murder investigation in British history, and finally solves the identity of the killer known as "Jack the Ripper."

In a literary high-wire act reminiscent of both Hunter S. Thompson and Errol Morris, Bruce Robinson offers a radical reinterpretation of Jack the Ripper, contending that he was not the madman of common legend, but the vile manifestation of the Victorian Age's moral bankruptcy.

In exploring the case of Jack the Ripper, Robison goes beyond the who that has obsessed countless others and focuses on the why. He asserts that any "gentlemen" that walked above the fetid gutters of London, the nineteenth century's most depraved city, often harbored proclivities both violent and taboo—yearnings that went entirely unpunished, especially if he also bore royal connections. The story of Jack the Ripper hinges on accounts that were printed and distributed throughout history by the same murderous miscreants who frequented the East End of her Majesty's London, wiping the fetid muck from their boots when they once again reached the marble floors of society's finest homes.

Supported by primary sources and illustrated with 75 to 100 black and white photographs, this breathtaking work of cultural history dismisses the theories of previous "Ripperologists." A Robinson persuasively makes clear with his unique brilliance, The Ripper was far from a poor resident of Whitechapel . . . he was a way of life.


Secondly, on the Harper UK site:

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007548897/they-all-love-jack

For over a hundred years, ‘the mystery of Jack the Ripper’ has been a source of unparalleled fascination and horror, spawning an army of obsessive theorists, and endless volumes purporting finally to reveal the identity of the brutal murderer who terrorised Victorian England.

But what if there was never really any ‘mystery’ at all? What if the Ripper was always hiding in plain sight, deliberately leaving a trail of clues to his identity for anyone who cared to look, while cynically mocking those who were supposedly attempting to bring him to justice?

In THEY ALL LOVE JACK, the award-winning film director and screenwriter Bruce Robinson exposes the cover-up that enabled one of history’s most notorious serial killers to remain at large. More than twelve years in the writing, this is much more than a radical reinterpretation of the Jack the Ripper legend, and an enthralling hunt for the killer. A literary high-wire act reminiscent of Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson, it is an expressionistic journey through the cesspools of late-Victorian society, a phantasmagoria of highly placed villains, hypocrites and institutionalised corruption.

Polemic, forensic investigation, panoramic portrait of an age, underpinned by deep scholarship and delivered in Robinson’s inimitably vivid and scabrous prose, THEY ALL LOVE JACK is an absolutely riveting and unique book, demolishing the theories of generations of self-appointed experts – the so-called ‘Ripperologists’ – to make clear, at last, who really did it; and more importantly, how he managed to get away with it for so long.

[HH Munro]

Given the profile of the author (he may not be a household name, but he's very well known in media circles, plus he's a *great* interviewee, and gives great copy, as it were), and the fact that this is being published by one of the big mainstream houses (with a big mainstream publicity budget!), I think it's fair to say that Robinson's book will get more press than any Ripper book since Patricia Cornwell's...

[Chris2307uk]

I've not seen much in the press so far regarding this book, other than what has already been posted on this forum. With only 5 days until release I was hoping for more. Maybe even a clue as to who his suspect is...

[barnflatwyngarde]

I've not seen much in the press so far regarding this book, other than what has already been posted on this forum. With only 5 days until release I was hoping for more. Maybe even a clue as to who his suspect is...

Chris, Yeah I agree that it is strange that nothing has leaked re the slant of the book.

At 500 pages long, Robinson will have plenty of time and space to put across his thesis.

Am looking forward to it.

[gnote]

Chris, Yeah I agree that it is strange that nothing has leaked re the slant of the book.

At 500 pages long, Robinson will have plenty of time and space to put across his thesis.

Am looking forward to it.

I'm not sure if i heard it be here, but apparently Robinson is putting Michael Maybrick forth as the Ripper. I don't know if that's been confirmed 100% by anybody yet however.

[barnflatwyngarde]

Gnote,
I started an earlier thread about "We All Love Jack" and poster Spyglass
said that he had heard that Robinson apparently plumps for Maybrick as JTR.

It is difficult to see how anyone can plump for Maybrick, after the fiasco over purported diary, but if Maybrick is his suspect it is always possible that he has come up with new information without resorting to the diary at all.

We wait and wonder!

[caz]

I've not seen much in the press so far regarding this book, other than what has already been posted on this forum. With only 5 days until release I was hoping for more. Maybe even a clue as to who his suspect is...

Hi Chris, All,

I have been reliably informed that, over this coming weekend, the Telegraph Magazine and Sunday Times Culture Magazine will both carry major features about Bruce and his new book.

You can thank me with the finest wines available to humanity. I want them here, and I want them now!

I'm off to Camberwell tomorrow for the weekend so I will look out for a Camberwell Carrot.

Love,

Caz
X

[barnflatwyngarde]

Enjoy the trip Caz.

I hope you have the pleasure of bumping into Geoff Woade.

His head weighs 50lbs on its own, imagine the size of his...........

[gnote]

It's worse than most of us thought:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11899901/jack-the-ripper-mystery-solved.html

Robinson’s theory, argued with a forensic attention to detail, is that all of the killings bore the unmistakable stamp of being perversions of Freemasonic ritual: the symbol of a pair of compasses, ‘the trademark of Freemasonry’, carved into the face of Catherine Eddowes; removal of meal buttons and coins from the bodies of Eddowes and Annie Chapman - ‘The removal of metal is axiomatic in Masonic ritual,’ Robinson writes, money being ‘an emblem of vice’... all of these things and more were not feverish acts of madness but carefully laid clues, the Ripper’s calling card, in what he called his ‘funny little game’ - a gruesome paperchase designed to taunt the authorities, and Charles Warren in particular. The cryptic graffiti in Goulston Street was ‘the most flagrant clue of all.’

[Shaggyrand]

It's worse than most of us thought:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11899901/jack-the-ripper-mystery-solved.html

Robinson’s theory, argued with a forensic attention to detail, is that all of the killings bore the unmistakable stamp of being perversions of Freemasonic ritual: the symbol of a pair of compasses, ‘the trademark of Freemasonry’, carved into the face of Catherine Eddowes; removal of meal buttons and coins from the bodies of Eddowes and Annie Chapman - ‘The removal of metal is axiomatic in Masonic ritual,’ Robinson writes, money being ‘an emblem of vice’... all of these things and more were not feverish acts of madness but carefully laid clues, the Ripper’s calling card, in what he called his ‘funny little game’ - a gruesome paperchase designed to taunt the authorities, and Charles Warren in particular. The cryptic graffiti in Goulston Street was ‘the most flagrant clue of all.’

I have been hoping it was some kind of epic Grand Unifying Theory of Jack. Wonder how Sickert will work in. His confidant maybe? Since M. Maybrick was also a cricket fan I'm hoping Druitt was killed by the masons because MM was taking too long framing James with the diary.

[gnote]

I have been hoping it was some kind of epic Grand Unifying Theory of Jack. Wonder how Sickert will work in. His confidant maybe? Since M. Maybrick was also a cricket fan I'm hoping Druitt was killed by the masons because MM was taking too long framing James with the diary.

Maybe Sir William poisoned Druitt to render him unconscious and then Albert Victor dumped him into the river from the royal carriage?

Kosminski was never insane either. He was kidnapped and Gull performed some brain surgery on him causing his future condition. This was in order to get him locked away in an asylum and provided another convenient suspect for Sir Melville to write about.