He was tall, strikingly handsome, and always immaculately tailored. He was adored by judges, policemen, and prosecuting barristers. Cabinet ministers consulted him. In the 1920s and ‘30s his name was a household word, up there with Greta Garbo, Franklin Roosevelt, and Mussolini.

The 1910 Crippen trial led on to Brides in the Bath, Bywaters and Thompson, Major Armstrong, the Blazing Car, and Brighton Trunk murders, The Podmore case, the Murder on the Crumbles case, and the Vera Page Case.  Spilsbury’s extraordinary career also took in investigations into the R101 airship disaster and a major role in Operation Mincemeat, the “Man Who Never Was” deception, which saved thousands of Allied lives in World War II.

Yet a few years later, he would commit suicide in bizarre circumstances. Just a handful of people attended his bleak cremation in 1947.

Spilsbury is still widely regarded as the father of modern pathology. In 2004, a Blue Plaque was put up in London to celebrate “the most brilliant scientific detective of all time.”  Spilsbury did much to bring forensic medicine to the heart of the trial process, but this “prima donna, increasingly thought of as a bit of a rogue” created a reputation of infallibility. In murder cases, he almost invariably appeared for the prosecution. His evidence could – quite literally – be lethal.

New information starkly undermines several of his controversial murder verdicts, some of which led to execution. Light has also been thrown on Spilsbury’s background and his uneven relationship with the Establishment.