CLAIRE Harman, Durham University’s professor of creative writing, is making a visit to Farnham, her home town, on September 26 to talk about her most recent book, Murder by the Book: A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime.

This is the true story of the shocking murder of Lord William Russell in 1840 and its connections with a best-selling novel of the day and a literary controversy that deeply involved both Dickens and Thackeray.

Claire attended St Polycarp’s School and her mother still lives in Weybourne. For some years she shared her teaching duties between the universities of Oxford and Columbia in New York, and the author of five biographies is also well known on both sides of the Atlantic as a poet and short story writer, winning many prestigious awards over the years.

In 2009 she visited Farnham to talk about her best-selling book on Jane Austen, Jane’s Fame, and will return to discuss her latest book at St Thomas-on-the-Bourne church on Wednesday, September 26 at 8pm, preceded by refreshments at 7.30pm.

Murder by the Book is to be published by Penguin in October. The notorious book in question was a novel by Harrison Ainsworth about the real-life robber Jack Sheppard who escaped from prison numerous times before being hanged at Newgate.

Lord Russell, a long time Member of Parliament, was in 1840 murdered in his sleep by his Swiss valet François Benjamin Courvoisier, who had reportedly read Ainsworth’s novel Jack Sheppard in the days leading up to the crime.

Several news reports implied that the novel’s glorification of criminal life had led him to commit the murder and, like Sheppard, Courvoisier was publicly hanged outside Newgate Prison on July 6, 1840.

Claire’s talk is presented by The Farnham Society and tickets (£6 members, £8 non-members and £3 students) will be available on the door.