Reading Matters (week 43) October 20, 2026

Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be executed in England in 1955. Britain’s most famous hangman said she was one of the bravest people he’d dealt with. In the compelling words of critically acclaimed author, Louisa Treger’s A Fatal Love (Bloomsbury/Jonathan Ball) we read about the mother of two, likened to Marilyn Monroe, being repeatedly bruised and abused to the extent that a kick from her racing car lover killed their unborn child.

“She would not have been hanged in today’s world awareness of gender-based violence,” Louisa told me in our fascinating interview.

Sue Monk Kidd, author of renowned The Secret Life of Bees, describes in her new book: Writing Creativity and Soul about what it was like turning 50. “I fell into a small sorrow,” she writes. Published by Penguin Randon House/ Canongate.

Famous SA actress Ntando Rambani survived her Soweto shack fire home, set alight by her father who then waited to shoot her, when she was only three years ago. She tells the story in, From One Mother to Another that she wrote with author Zibu Sithole. A shocking and courageous tale, published by Macmillan Publishers.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall