Season 1 • Episode 4
LatestThis is a dramatisation of the true story of Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong, a solicitor and magistrate's clerk who lived in the small Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye. In 1921 he was arrested and charged with poisoning his domineering wife, Catherine, and later attempting to poison a business rival, Oswald Martin, by administering arsenic to them. At his trial, Armstrong claimed that he had bought the arsenic simply to kill the dandelions on his lawn. However he was convicted of murder and executed in 1922.
Acting
Michael Kitchen's face does more work than the script.
Production
Hay-on-Wye never looked so sinister in daylight.
Writing
Dialogue so restrained you can hear the arsenic dissolving.
Peter Vaughan
Dr. Hinks
Bernard Hepton
Don Henderson
Lesley Sharp
Constance 'Connie' Martin, nee Davies
Diana Quick
Marion Glassford-Gale
Michael Kitchen
Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong
David Thewlis
Oswald Martin
Sarah Miles
Catherine Armstrong
Robert Stephens
Henry Vaughan
Roger Lloyd Pack
Phillips
Patrick Godfrey
Griffiths
Paul Brooke
Arthur
Amanda Walker
Bessie
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Armstrong was the only solicitor ever hanged for murder in Britain; the case is still debated by true crime historians.
Hay-on-Wye now hosts the world's largest secondhand book festival—ironic for a town whose most famous resident couldn't read the room.
GB
