A STRONG WORDS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
'CHILLING AND THRILLING' JOHN BANVILLE
'IRRESISTIBLE STORYTELLING' THE TIMES

On Tuesday morning, 23rd September 1975, the corpses of three unmarried siblings, last surviving members of the ancient Luxton clan of Winkleigh, North Devon, were found on their remote farm. All three had had their heads blown off. Robbie's cheeks and neck had been stabbed; Frances had a broken leg. Strangely, each of the four doors to the house had been locked from the inside.

The Luxtons' idyllic farm on a stretch of lush countryside between Exmoor and Dartmoor had been lovingly tended with outdated methods. There were rumours of a thwarted betrothal, wrangles over money and property, generational feuds in the extended family, bouts of insanity and extreme miserliness.

John Cornwell's classic investigation into the violent deaths of these unhappy siblings told a story of a farming family struggling under unbearable practical and emotional pressures, their violent deaths, the police investigation and the proceedings of the inquest. The official verdict was that there had been a suicide pact, but Cornwell decided to revisit the evidence forty years after Earth to Earth was first published, and he finds that there were anomalies in the evidence suggesting alternative, criminal scenarios, and the misery that preceded these savage deaths suggested even darker elements.

Were the Luxtons scapegoats of local malice, or victims of a murderous family conflict, stricken by a dire ancestral curse?

This new edition of a true crime classic includes a postscript in which the author describes the extraordinary lengths that the great poet Ted Hughes, a neighbour of the Luxtons, went to try and suppress publication of the book.

"Cornwell approaches it with the tenacity of an investigative journalist, the sympathy of a social worker drawing up case notes and the descriptive capacity of a novelist. What differentiates his book from the mass of true life crime stories is its insistence on making vivid for us not only the loud horror of the Luxtons' deaths, but the 40 years of claustrophobic rage, bred in silence, that preceded them" - New York Times

"Earth to Earth is a family tragedy, a clinching argument for the importance of journalism and truth-seeking - and an irresistible storytelling treat from top to tail." - The Times

"It stands the test of time today. This is a dark, penetrating, compulsive book." - The Spectator

"Welcome back, Earth to Earth . . . Penetrating thickets of rural suspicion, a painstaking trawl through the family archives to understand why the family was so wedded to their horribly old-fashioned and penny-pinching agricultural method, and the curious busybody involvement of local celebrity weirdo, the poet Ted Hughes." - Strong Words

"Earth to Earth, by John Cornwell, is a fully updated and revised edition of a true crime classic . . . there is a fascinating coda involving future Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, which adds an extra level of weirdness to an already strange and beguiling story." - Choice Magazine

"In it's second incarnation, [Earth to Earth] becomes not only a meditation on change, but also a reflection on the notion of truth . . . It is the best kind of compassionate, open-minded journalism, revealing a human story in all its oddity and contrariness" - TLS

"A masterpiece of investigative journalism . . . [and] a fascinating glimpse of rural life in the late Seventies" - Lucy Lethbridge, The Tablet