Education
Born in Hainault in Essex as Stephen Victor Knight, he attended West Hatch Technical High School, at nearby Chigwell.
Born in Hainault in Essex as Stephen Victor Knight, he attended West Hatch Technical High School, at nearby Chigwell.
He is best remembered for the books Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (1976) and The Brotherhood (1984). He was not successful academically, and after leaving school at 16, Knight went to work as a salesman for the London Electricity Board in Chigwell. At 18 he got a job as a reporter on the Ilford Pictorial.
He then moved to the Hornchurch Echo.
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (1976) suggested that the Ripper murders were part of a conspiracy between Freemasons and the British Royal Family, a claim which is not accepted by historians. Nevertheless, the book became a bestseller, and was the inspiration for several works of fiction, among them the film Murder by Decree (1978) by Bob Clark and the graphic novel From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.
Knight"s last book before his death was The Killing of Justice Godfrey, exploring the death of Edmund Berry Godfrey in 1678, which had caused widespread anti-Catholic sentiment in England. He began to experience epileptic seizures in 1977, and in 1980 was discovered to have a brain tumour while taking part in a documentary for the Horizon television series.
The tumour was removed, but returned in 1984.
He was buried there. In the same year the couple had a daughter together, Nanouska Maria Knight. The couple later separated, and in November 1980 Knight announced that, when his divorce came through, he would marry Lesley Newson, a 28-year-old researcher on Horizon.
However, instead the couple later also separated.
(Superb retired library copy with plastic cover over dust ...)