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Earth to Earth

Lives and Violent Deaths of a Devon Farming Family: A True Crime Classic Revisited

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Earth to Earth

By: John Cornwell
Narrated by: Phillipe Bosher
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Summary

 On Tuesday morning, 23rd September 1975, the corpses of three unmarried siblings, last surviving members of the ancient Luxton clan of Winkleigh, North Devon, were found on their remote farm. All three had had their heads blown off. Robbie's cheeks and neck had been stabbed; Frances had a broken leg. Strangely, each of the four doors to the house had been locked from the inside.

The Luxtons' idyllic farm on a stretch of lush countryside between Exmoor and Dartmoor had been lovingly tended with outdated methods. There were rumours of a thwarted betrothal, wrangles over money and property, generational feuds in the extended family, bouts of insanity and extreme miserliness.

John Cornwell's classic investigation into the violent deaths of these unhappy siblings told a story of a farming family struggling under unbearable practical and emotional pressures, their violent deaths, the police investigation and the proceedings of the inquest. The official verdict was that there had been a suicide pact, but Cornwell decided to revisit the evidence forty years after Earth to Earth was first published, and he finds that there were anomalies in the evidence suggesting alternative, criminal scenarios, and the misery that preceded these savage deaths suggested even darker elements.

Were the Luxtons scapegoats of local malice, or victims of a murderous family conflict, stricken by a dire ancestral curse?

This new edition of a true crime classic includes a postscript in which the author describes the extraordinary lengths that the great poet Ted Hughes, a neighbour of the Luxtons, went to try and suppress publication of the book.©2025 John Cornwell Murder True Crime
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Critic reviews

Cornwell approaches it with the tenacity of an investigative journalist, the sympathy of a social worker drawing up case notes and the descriptive capacity of a novelist. What differentiates his book from the mass of true life crime stories is its insistence on making vivid for us not only the loud horror of the Luxtons' deaths, but the 40 years of claustrophobic rage, bred in silence, that preceded them
Exceptional true crime in the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a forensic examination of three mysterious killings but also an utterly absorbing portrait of a family, a region and a way of life. The new coda about Ted Hughes and the publication of the original book, fascinating in itself, adds a new, unsettling dimension to the whole story. A rich, compelling and powerful book. (Simon Mason)
John Cornwell marries the cool-headed forensic skills of the investigative journalist with the warmth and humanity of a true storyteller. The result is an utterly absorbing account of this great tragedy, revealing the many smaller, day-to-day tragedies which set a country family on the path to such a savage end. (Ed Stourton)
On first reading, a gripping true crime unravels before the reader; at a deeper level, it is a profound meditation on truth, reality, and what can, ultimately, be known. An instant classic. (Judith Flanders)
Earth to Earth is both chilling and thrilling, telling a mysterious story of the sequestered lives and tragic deaths of a Devon farming family. The account of the poet Ted Hughes's efforts to suppress the book will come as no surprise to anyone with reservations about this self-appointed shaman - a word only one syllable longer than 'sham'. (John Banville)
Earth to Earth is a family tragedy, a clinching argument for the importance of journalism and truth-seeking - and an irresistible storytelling treat from top to tail. (John Self)
It stands the test of time today. This is a dark, penetrating, compulsive book.
Welcome back, Earth to Earth . . . Penetrating thickets of rural suspicion, a painstaking trawl through the family archives to understand why the family was so wedded to their horribly old-fashioned and penny-pinching agricultural method, and the curious busybody involvement of local celebrity weirdo, the poet Ted Hughes.
Earth to Earth, by John Cornwell, is a fully updated and revised edition of a true crime classic . . . there is a fascinating coda involving future Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, which adds an extra level of weirdness to an already strange and beguiling story.
In it's second incarnation, [Earth to Earth] becomes not only a meditation on change, but also a reflection on the notion of truth . . . It is the best kind of compassionate, open-minded journalism, revealing a human story in all its oddity and contrariness
All stars
Most relevant
I liked the book. I really felt that I knew the family we died in such violent circumstances. But I found the narration jarring. In amongst the clipped English accent were strange American pronunciations and the Devon accents were absolutely dreadful.

Great book. No so the Narration

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I didn’t know the book from 1982 or the story at all. It’s a superior work of true crime writing. I also thought the narrator was great with his accents, and excellent overall.

Classic

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The narrator does an incredible job balancing the authorial voice to maintain throughline and energy of the story, while seamlessly moving in and out of numerous accents that make it so easy and engaging to follow who is talking and where we are. I sometimes find nonfiction hard to keep focussed on and this narrator kept me rapt the whole time.

Fantastic narration

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A sad and gripping story told in a convincing way by a highly skilled narrator. . 5 stars. A must listen.

Excellent narrator

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I don’t understand why this book has been published. Earth to Earth has already been published some years ago when it won a Crime Writing Award. The author has decided to re-issue it with extra material on Ted Hughes’ involvement with the tragic Devon Luxton family and with his attempts to get Cornwell’s book pulped on the grounds that it hurt living people.

All the material on the Luxton family and their isolation as they farmed as though in the nineteenth century is well documented and detailed, but not new. The details of the slaughter of the family were thoroughly examined before as well. The material with Ted Hughes details Cornwell’s initial friendship with him which was soured by Hughes’ weird ideas on astrology and ouija and the like, and finally reduced to bitterness and fury by his pressure for the book to be pulped. All this falling out with Hughes shows the author as vindictive and angry and not worth publishing.

The narration is irritating – some faux Devon accents and pauses between chapters which make you think the recording has gone wrong.

Why was this book published?

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