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HoZ acquires Lord Lucan title

07.12.12 | Joshua Farrington

Head of Zeus has pre-empted world rights to a book on the mysterious disappearance of Lord Lucan by award-winning biographer Laura Thompson.

Richard Milbank, publishing director of non-fiction at Head of Zeus signed the deal for The Circle: The Mysterious Case of Lord Lucan with Charlie Viney at The Viney Agency for what was described as “a robust five-figure sum”.

Thompson has previously written Agatha Christie: An English Mystery (Headline Review), and won the Somerset Maugham Award for her first book, The Dogs: A Personal History of Greyhound Racing (Chatto & Windus).

Milbank said: “Head of Zeus are absolutely delighted to have acquired The Circle. Laura Thompson will be the most probing of investigators and the most stylish of narrators of the strange and shocking events that took place in London’s Belgravia on 7th November 1974. This will be the definitive account of the Lucan case: both detective story and social history - a multilayered portrait of an entire era, of a vanished class, of an extraordinary cast of characters, of a perplexing murder mystery.”

The book will be published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Lucan’s disappearance in November 2014.

• Charlie Viney
• Head of Zeus
• Joshua Farrington
• Laura Thompson
• Lord Lucan
• Richard Milbank
• Rights deal