Skip to main content

History of a Drowning Boy by Dennis Nilsen

 


SYNOPSIS

Dennis Nilsen was one of Britain's most notorious serial killers, jailed for life in 1983 after the murders of 12 men and the attempted murders of many more.

Seven years after his conviction, Nilsen began to write his autobiography and over a period of 18 years he typed 6,000 pages of introspection, reflection, comment and explanation.

History of a Drowning Boy - taken exclusively from these astonishing writings - uncovers, for the first time the motives behind the murders, and delivers a clear understanding of how such horrific events could have happened, tracing the origins back to early childhood. In another first, it provides an insight into his 35 years inside the maximum-security prison system including his everyday life on the wings; his interactions with the authorities and other notorious prisoners; and his artistic endeavours of music, writing and drama. It also reveals the truth behind many of the myths surrounding Dennis Nilsen, as reported in the media.

Nilsen was determined to have his memoir published but to his frustration, the Home Office blocked publication during his lifetime. He died in 2018, entrusting the manuscript to his closest friend and it is now being published with the latter's permission.

Any autobiography present the writer's story from just one perspective - his own, and as such this record should be treated with some caution. An excellent foreword by criminologist Dr Mark Pettigrew offers some context to Nilsen's words, and this important work provides an extraordinary journey through the life of a remarkable and inadequate man.

REVIEW

I have found that there are not many words to describe the detail that makes me feel when thinking of this book. There have been times when I felt some form of sympathy towards Nilsen, however it is not long before I also have feelings of dread, nausea and just that sense of uneasiness. 

Before turning my eyes to the first page, I had absolutely no knowledge about Nilsen and his story. I wasn't one to watch the ITV drama and haven't got much of a fascination towards crime documentaries. In fact, due to how some people I used to know watched these documentaries as some sort of religion, I have tended to make it my mission to avoid these types of films. However, I think that in some ways this has given me a clean slate to work on, so that there was no previous judgements as to what I was going to read. Sometimes this was good and sometimes it seemed like my naivety struck me down like a fly.

First of all, I would like to put a disclaimer out there who are generally struck down by queasiness very easily, this is not a book for the faint-hearted. There are some themes that are extremely disturbing that even I had to put it down more than one time. On the contrary, even though there are explicit details not only about his early life to the time when he made his first kill, I found that the second half was more interesting than the first, due to his wide details about his incarceration. 

What I found most interesting was the prison system that he was under and how this changed as time progressed. How the press had replaced that form of entertainment that onlookers once had for the death penalty, was glorified through the pages of the newspaper, with Nilsen's comments about how the facts that were brought to attention, did not always have truth to them. This is a fascinating point about how we are consuming the news and even now, it seems, there may be more fiction than fact in order to bring about entertainment to the masses.

However, the thing that shocked me the most was how at home he was in the prison system. How he still knew about events happening in the world and how he was reading the news and watching the tv like the rest of us. It really brings about some questions about how our justice system works and how this compares to other countries in terms of what they want to do to their prisoners.

I feel like this piece is not going to stray from my mind anytime soon, the good and the bad and maybe has made me re-evaluate society in terms of how it works and my own place in it.

RATING: *** (THREE STARS)

 BUY LINKS



Disclosure: If you buy books linked to this site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

What can we truly know of the universe? Is the universe simply beyond our comprehension or are we just too ignorant to see what is actually in front of us? What if there is life beyond Earth? What if we can discover it for ourselves? What if, our curiosity gets the better of us all? This book seems to pose many questions to what knowledge we already possess yet, are we looking at life in the right way and how we come to use the environment of Earth around us. It takes us through the story of the human race and how we have expanded our skills and knowledge to become a race which is both rational and intelligent enough to discover the final frontier, space. But what comes after all of this? This is just as an important question as the one in which we ask of how we all got here in the first place. The great thing about this book is that I feel like if you read it before watching the film, you would probably have a better appreciation for Kubrick's vision. In fact, it could be believed...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog Tour: The Lore of Prometheus by Graham Austin-King

  SYNOPSIS John Carver has three rules: Don't drink in the daytime, don't gamble when the luck has gone, and don't talk to the dead people who come to visit. It has been almost five years since the incident in Kabul. Since the magic stirred within him and the stories began. Fleeing the army, running from the whispers, the guilt, and the fear he was losing his mind, Carver fell into addiction, dragging himself through life one day at a time. Desperation has pulled him back to Afganistan, back to the heat, the dust, and the truth he worked so hard to avoid. But there are others, obsessed with power and forbidden magics, who will stop at nothing to learn the truth of his gifts. Abducted and chained, Carver must break more than his own rules if he is to harness this power and survive.
Post a Comment
Read more

A Wedding in the Country by Katie Fforde

  SYNOPSIS Lizzie has just arrived in London, determined to make the best of her new life. Her mother may be keen that she should have a nice wedding in the country to a Suitable Man chosen by her. And Lizzie may be going to cookery school to help her become a Good Wife. But she definitely wants to have some fun first. It is 1963 and London is beginning to swing as Lizzie cuts her hair, buys a new dress with a fashionably short hemline, and moves in with two of her best friends, one of whom lives in a grand but rundown house in Belgravia which has plenty of room for a lodger. Soon Lizzie's life is so exciting that she has forgotten all about her mother's marriage plans for her. All she can think about is that the young man she is falling in love with appears to be engaged to someone else...
1 comment
Read more

Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds by Darren Shan

It's been a while since Darren Shan has written a children's book. Focusing more on his adult audience these last few years it seemed like this was the avenue he would have stayed in. However, I'm glad he made the transition back. I can't believe how much I have missed him doing a children's book until now. Covid-19 is at least good for one thing. I get to start on a new series that I can't wait to read. This first book in the serial seems different from previous children's books that he has written in the past. Almost mysterious and part of a realm that is more metaphysical rather than anything. Yet still enchanting in a way that makes look at the world in a new-found way In some ways it kind of reminds me of Plato's cave in the sense that there is something more to reality than what most people let on. Something that can be seen to be incomprehensible to the person that has not experienced The Merge and will never understand the importance of it. Once ...
Post a Comment
Read more