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They Hanged My Saintly Billy
Robert Graves recounts the life of William Palmer: surgeon, racehorse owner...a confessed forger who got girls into trouble, doped horses, robbed a few people...but was he a prisoner? Based on an actual trial that took place in 1856, this novel, like Graves' Wife to Mr. Milton and I, Claudius, has all the immediacy and spiciness of contemporary Victorian life. It is told through interviews with Palmer's friends and enemies. This book has humor, social significance and passion, and makes absorbing and scintillating reading.
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
13 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Robert Graves
639 books2,064 followersRobert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. Born in Wimbledon, he received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G.H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Plato, Greek poets, Michelangelo & Shakespeare, "who had felt as I did".
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 21, 2009
Good read if you dig Mr. Graves.
December 16, 2019
much more shortly, but this was so much fun to read! Did William Palmer do it, or didn't he? That is the question.
More to come and soon.
More to come and soon.
March 26, 2021
Saintly Billy was a liar and a scoundrel, but likely not a killer.
This book was well-written but probably a third too long. The first 100 pages especially drag.
This book was well-written but probably a third too long. The first 100 pages especially drag.
July 6, 2014
I read the Academy Chicago Publishers edition wanted to add to system but it would not allow it. That edition is trade paperback with nice typeface. Althought not the best of Robert Graves' fiction, it is still enjoyable. His fictional interviews of the friends and neighbors of 19th century poisoner Dr. William Palmer are almost indistinguisable from the real ones. An interesting read.
December 31, 2020
Victorian England in all its sordid detail; beautifully written
October 4, 2023
They Killed My Saintly Billy is a historic novel by Robert Graves that reads as a true crime book and is about a true crime. That’s where the problems lie. It tells the story of Dr William Palmer, who went down in history as ‘the prince of poisoners’ after being convicted for killing William Cook and suspected of a number more.
As a novel, it is rather slow and turgid, consisting of lots of reportage of contested details. The various ‘interviewees’ give a certain amount of variety to the voices but also halt narrative flow. The crime and conviction of William Palmer rests on a great many competing interests and also on a whole swathe of detailed minutiae related to loans, horse-racing, chemistry and insurance. It’s not really until the end that the importance all those little details really comes into play and the novel feels too much like homework.
However, as true crime, there’s no clear delineation between the interviews and details that are matter of public record and those that are made up. The book is trying to make the case that although Palmer wasn’t in any way saintly, he was not a murderer - but the book is also a novel. The case it makes rests on a body of evidence that is clearly well-researched but also a work of fiction.
As such, the book is too turgid to be an exciting novel, but too made-up to be true crime. However, the pace does pick up when Palmer is arrested and the chapters about the trial do argue very convincingly that whether he murdered Cook or not, he was not given a fair trial and given a guilty sentence in a case which has lots of reasonable doubt.
The weakest element of the book is probably Palmer himself. A near tee-totaler who’s always drinking (and even bets he can drink some people under the table). He’s portrayed as a quiet man who paid over-the-odds for his student digs so he could have peace and quiet but also the life and soul of a party with a sharp wit. A dedicated family man who is always cheating on his wife.. maybe he’s being caricatured as the very soul of Victorian hypocrisy, but he comes across as inconsistent. The only trait he maintains throughout is his unnerving calmness.
Yet, the book did convince me that he didn’t kill Cook. The suggestion at the end that he slipped Cook a vomiting drug so he could do some dodgy financial dealing while Cook was in bed does seem likely. Yet the argument that his wife took poison to kill herself and free up life insurance money does not. If he was the kind of man to encourage his brother to drink himself to death so he could cash in on another life insurance, then he didn’t have many scruples to weigh him down. What I can definitely believe, though, is that he was essentially hanged because of his reputation for poisoning rival horses - horses being more important to the establishment than people.
As a novel, it is rather slow and turgid, consisting of lots of reportage of contested details. The various ‘interviewees’ give a certain amount of variety to the voices but also halt narrative flow. The crime and conviction of William Palmer rests on a great many competing interests and also on a whole swathe of detailed minutiae related to loans, horse-racing, chemistry and insurance. It’s not really until the end that the importance all those little details really comes into play and the novel feels too much like homework.
However, as true crime, there’s no clear delineation between the interviews and details that are matter of public record and those that are made up. The book is trying to make the case that although Palmer wasn’t in any way saintly, he was not a murderer - but the book is also a novel. The case it makes rests on a body of evidence that is clearly well-researched but also a work of fiction.
As such, the book is too turgid to be an exciting novel, but too made-up to be true crime. However, the pace does pick up when Palmer is arrested and the chapters about the trial do argue very convincingly that whether he murdered Cook or not, he was not given a fair trial and given a guilty sentence in a case which has lots of reasonable doubt.
The weakest element of the book is probably Palmer himself. A near tee-totaler who’s always drinking (and even bets he can drink some people under the table). He’s portrayed as a quiet man who paid over-the-odds for his student digs so he could have peace and quiet but also the life and soul of a party with a sharp wit. A dedicated family man who is always cheating on his wife.. maybe he’s being caricatured as the very soul of Victorian hypocrisy, but he comes across as inconsistent. The only trait he maintains throughout is his unnerving calmness.
Yet, the book did convince me that he didn’t kill Cook. The suggestion at the end that he slipped Cook a vomiting drug so he could do some dodgy financial dealing while Cook was in bed does seem likely. Yet the argument that his wife took poison to kill herself and free up life insurance money does not. If he was the kind of man to encourage his brother to drink himself to death so he could cash in on another life insurance, then he didn’t have many scruples to weigh him down. What I can definitely believe, though, is that he was essentially hanged because of his reputation for poisoning rival horses - horses being more important to the establishment than people.
November 20, 2023
I had sort of a surreal experience on Saturday. I went to a horserace track with some Mormons. And get this. Two horses I bet $1 on won on long odds. I made $50. I don't have an addictive personality, but if I did I think I might end up like ol' Billy Palmer here. Doping horses and making bets. Stealing money and trying to murder my brother. Not nearly as good as I, Claudius, but compelling in its own way and now that I'm a man of the Turf, a deeply relatable tale.
August 23, 2019
Even if Robert Graves it's a well known author this is his first book I read.
I liked the style of writing, the interesting and engrossing plot and the character development.
I will surely read his other more famous books.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
I liked the style of writing, the interesting and engrossing plot and the character development.
I will surely read his other more famous books.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
November 7, 2022
I didn’t think it possible, but Graves has nearly bored me to death with this one. It’s just a long stream of bets on horses and insurance scams - and somehow, that’s not very intriguing. I don’t know if I’ve just outgrown novels from this era, or if this really just is not his best. Maybe I’ll try again another time.
February 4, 2022
Interesting stuff, not least because it illustrates that Robert Graves turned his hand to all sorts of things whilst, presumably, trying to keep at bay the depression and damage that he suffered as a result of a lost youth spent in the trenches.
April 27, 2018
Better on the re-read.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews