Why has the Lord Lucan scandal held such a monumental fascination for the British public?

The greatest and most enduring murder mystery of the 20th Century.

The Lord Lucan scandal is, without exaggeration, the greatest and most enduring mystery of the 20th Century. In British journalism, it is considered to be the Holy Grail of Scoops, a story that is so sensational that it would win fame and fortune for any news-hound who managed to crack it.

Can there be a single person over the age of 40 who has not at some stage wondered what happened to Britain’s most dashing peer?

There is, of course, some little mystery over how Lucan’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, came to be so tragically bludgeoned to death on that bleak November night in 1974.

But what has turned the Lord Lucan saga into the stuff of legend is that Lucan has become almost a modern-day Rip Van Winkle. Nobody has the faintest clue how Lucan managed to disappear off the face of the earth.

Did he really drown himself in the Channel? Or was he - as was widely surmised in the Press at the time - fed to the tigers of Howletts Wild Animal Park? Or perhaps he really was spirited off to a lonely African exile by the well-heeled “Clermont set”?

The beauty of this mystery is that, despite scores of supposed sightings, no-one has even come close to laying a finger on the nation’s most infamous fugitive, the 7th Earl of Lucan.

The story of Lord Lucan can be found in William Coles' brilliantly edited
Lord Lucan: My Story