![]() ![]() He wrote about Farquhar cynically, while giving a false impression of himself: the well-connected academic thought that he “was exceptionally humane and thoughtful for a 20-year-old”. Field noted it in his diary, in which he described “snake-talking” his way into the then 65-year-old’s home to have dinner with him. He prays to his God, and he thinks a miracle has happened.” Farquhar kept a journal in it he recorded the first lesson he gave at the University of Buckingham, in April 2011, to a group of “not very responsive” students, “except for one clever, enthusiastic lad, Ben Field … he is a delightful young man”.įarquhar’s loneliness made him vulnerable. “This man is deeply intelligent, but he’s also a deeply devout man, and deeply lonely. Spall thinks that ultimately it encouraged him to believe in Field’s feelings for him, even though he’s just parachuted into his life. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” Also in the room alongside Phelps and Spall is the Irish actor Éanna Hardwicke, who gives a disturbingly ambiguous portrayal of Field, a PhD-level student with an apparent love of literature.Ī 2019 Channel 4 documentary, Catching a Killer, showed Field’s arrest in it, he tells a custody officer, “I’m in the process of completing a book about 18th-century poetry.” Hardwicke, who studied the footage of Field “very, very closely”, chillingly captures how, for both Farquhar and headmistress Ann Moore-Martin, the young man represented a romantic dream of unexpected late-life love.Īs a gay man, Farquhar had struggled to reconcile his Christian faith with his sexuality. “I was so moved by it, shocked by it, it’s a harrowing tale. Spall says he found Farquhar’s awful fate “deeply affecting”. ![]() He was even immortalised in the 2013 film Believe. Phelps is sitting opposite one of Britain’s finest screen actors, Timothy Spall, who plays Farquhar, formerly an inspirational English teacher at Stowe public school and at Manchester Grammar, where his pupils included the broadcaster Michael Crick and Telegraph columnist Jim White. We’re in a wood-panelled room in a former magistrate’s court in central London. ![]() But it lives in here.” She points to her head. “If I’d put them, people wouldn’t be able to watch it. “There are things that I’ve had access to which will never, ever be able to see the light of day,” she tells me. Phelps, a former EastEnders scriptwriter, who is probably best known for her starry Christmas adaptations of Agatha Christie mysteries on BBC One, immersed herself in every detail of what had happened. Field was in training for ordination himself becoming a vicar, he once wrote, would allow him to “outmanoeuvre the church”. ![]() The title refers to a sermon Field gave in 2017 on the theme “Thou shalt not kill” at the Baptist church where his father was minister, less than 20 miles from Maids Moreton, where Field had murdered lecturer Peter Farquhar in 2015. “When I was researching this, it gave me nightmares,” says writer Sarah Phelps, who has now turned the events into a four-part BBC One drama, The Sixth Commandment, which starts on Monday. Her final days were key to unmasking Field: the police would discover that he had drawn up a list of people who might be “useful” to him, most of them elderly. The twentysomething had also duped the retired headmistress into a sexual relationship – and again convinced the 83-year-old to change her will. Yet the killer, Benjamin Field, was not even suspected of the murder until the death, 18 months later, of a woman who lived three doors down in the same small Buckinghamshire village. A university student who had wormed his way into the affections of his 65-year-old lecturer, exchanging betrothal vows and persuading him to alter his will, is convicted of his murder after a systematic campaign of poisoning and psychological torture. Al Mayadeen told Reuters he was not working with the channel.It was a case that sent a shudder through the land. The third person killed was Hussein Aqil. 13.Īl Mayadeen named its killed journalists as correspondent Farah Omar and camera operator Rabie al-Memari. Reuters visuals journalist Issam Abdallah was killed in southern Lebanon on Oct. 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Tuesday's deaths add to a toll of more than 50 journalists killed covering the war between Israel and Hamas and its spillover to other parts of the region since Oct. It is the worst violence at the border since Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006 and has so far killed more than 70 Hezbollah fighters, 13 Lebanese civilians, seven Israeli troops and three Israeli civilians. Israel-Lebanon border violence has escalated in recent days, raising fears of a widening war in the Middle East that could draw in both the United States and Iran. An elderly woman was also killed in an Israeli strike on Tuesday morning, according to Lebanon's state media. ![]()
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