Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://andrewhankinson.com/
CITY: Newcastle upon Tyne
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2016141360
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016141360
HEADING: Hankinson, Andrew
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670 __ |a You could do something amazing with your life, 2016: |b title page (Andrew Hankinson) about the author (Andrew Hankinson is a journalist who was born, raised and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne)
PERSONAL
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist. Arena magazine, staff writer; freelance feature writer.
AWARDS:CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, and Northern Writers Award, 2012, both for You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life.
WRITINGS
Contributor of news articles to various publications, including Guardian, Wired, Observer, Mosaic, and New Yorker.
SIDELIGHTS
Born and raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Andrew Hankinson is a writer and journalist who was a staff writer at Arena magazine, and has reported from Haiti, Iraq, and Ukraine, writing about diverse topics like chemical weapons, healthcare, and crime. In 2012, he received the Northern Writers Award. As a freelance feature writer, he has published articles in Observer, Guardian, and Wired.
In 2016, Hankinson published his debut book You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life, based on a true crime, that delves into the mind of Geordie bodybuilder and murderer Raoul Moat. In July 2010, just two days after being released from prison, Moat shoots his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart in the stomach, kills her new boyfriend, Chris Brown, and blinds a police officer. He then hides out with two friends he called hostages but who were later convicted as accomplices. Moat is tracked by television crews led by Ray Mears who was hired by the police. Eventually the police close in and Moat kills himself. Hankinson disarmingly writes from the mind of Moat, giving readers a glimpse into the motivations, obsessions, anger, and self-pity of a murderer who blamed the situation on his girlfriend for betraying him. The author also explores Moat’s troubled childhood and his mentally disturbed mother.
As a feature writer, Hankinson wanted to try different kinds of writing, so he wrote the book. He said in an interview online at Scribe Publications that he wanted to write “second-person, inside someone’s head etc.—but it was never going to be commissioned by newspapers and magazines in the UK. So I decided a book was probably the only way I’d get to do that kind of writing, and show that it could still be revealing, consequential and affecting.” Praising the book for being an extraordinary study of violence in all its bathos and banality, Sarah Ditum commented in Spectator: “Critically, Hankinson is driven by genuine curiosity about his subject. Neither crass hagiography nor ignorant condemnation could deliver the answers he wants, and Moat’s inner life is so extraordinarily deluded that it’s arguable there is no way to understand it without standing inside.”
“Hankinson deftly assembles the man’s inner workings, lending credibility to his portrait while, beyond the myopic commentary, we know, although we don’t see it, that the outside world is closing in,” noted New Statesman reviewer Ben Myers. A Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked: “Ultimately, though, putting both the narrative and readers inside the head of the subject is a gamble that meets with mixed success. True crime from a radically different perspective.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review of You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life.
New Statesman, February 5, 2016, Ben Myers, review of You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life, p. 41.
Spectator, February 6, 2016, Sarah Ditum, review of You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life, p. 44.
ONLINE
Scribe Publications, https://scribepublications.com/ (July 1, 2018), author interview.
ANDREW HANKINSON
Andrew Hankinson is a journalist and award-winning author who has contributed to the Guardian, Wired, Observer, Mosaic and New Yorker. His debut book, about a murderer, was described in the press as "extraordinary", "radically different" and "perhaps the most brilliant piece of extended journalism in recent years".
Chair
He has reported from countries such as Haiti, Iraq and Ukraine on subjects including chemical weapons, healthcare and crime. His work has been described as "profound" on BBC radio and "persuasive" on BBC television.
HomeExploreInsights
Q&A WITH ANDREW HANKINSON
Andrew Hankinson, author of the new true crime book You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] provides some insights into his writing.
What inspired you to write the book?
I was frustrated I think. Working as a feature writer, I always wanted to try different kinds of writing and approaches – second-person, inside someone’s head etc – but it was never going to be commissioned by newspapers and magazines in the UK. So I decided a book was probably the only way I’d get to do that kind of writing, and show that it could still be revealing, consequential and affecting.
What research did you undertake to write the book?
Everything in the book is based on evidence, such as recordings Moat made on the run, a written confession, transcripts of his phone calls, audio recordings he made during the final years of his life, medical records, psychological assessments and letters. I also attended Moat’s inquest and the trial of his accomplices, and I interviewed some of his friends and family.
What music did you listen to while writing the book?
It sounds ridiculous, but I made a playlist called ‘Depressing’, which included songs like 'Don’t Give Up' by Kate Bush, 'Power of Love' by Jennifer Rush and lots of other melancholic songs, mainly from the 1980s. I listened to it sometimes, but not very often. Mostly I was listening to recordings of Raoul Moat.
Which books inspire you?
Dispatches by Michael Herr; American Psycho; Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas; Happy Like Murderers; Radical Chic; American Ground by William Langeewiesche; The Lost Weekend.
Which book do you wish you’d written and why?
Not a very original choice, but One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – you try to live the life you want to live, but there’s so much pushing against it, and I’ve found that trying to escape conformity is just too hard. Some people keep trying, no matter the consequences, but most of us give up. Maybe I’ve totally misread the book, but it felt perfect. It seemed to cover all human conflict.
Describe your typical writing routine
It’s never been consistent. While freelancing I’d waste half the day drinking coffee and playing Grand Theft Auto. I’d write for maybe an hour or two. Since having kids I’ve realised time is a bit more important, so I try to write whenever I get an opportunity, which often means at night, though a friend said that if you write when you’re knackered you’ll write a knackered book, which is true I think. When I was writing my Raoul Moat book, it took years to do all the research, figure out how to write it, and draft and draft and draft the first 10,000 words or so to get the tone and point of view right, but once that was set, writing to completion was fast. I took three months off and just spent each day in Newcastle library, pulling together the research, putting it in order and writing a halfway okay story on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday I’d rewrite. I did about 3,000 words a week like that over the summer, leaving me two weeks to read through the whole book and try to fix the weak spots before handing it in. Then I asked for it back because I wasn't happy with it. That took another few weeks. You can't write well at that speed though without having the material ready and the method and voice comfortably laid out in front of you.
About the Author
Andrew Hankinson is a journalist who was born, raised, and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. He started his career as a staff writer at Arena magazine and in 2012 won a Northern Writers Award. He is now a freelance feature writer who has contributed to many publications, including Observer Magazine, The Guardian, and Wired.
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Print Marked Items
Hankinson, Andrew: YOU COULD DO
SOMETHING AMAZING WITH YOUR
LIFE [YOU ARE RAOUL MOAT]
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Hankinson, Andrew YOU COULD DO SOMETHING AMAZING WITH YOUR LIFE [YOU ARE
RAOUL MOAT] Scribe (Adult Nonfiction) $17.95 3, 20 ISBN: 978-1-925106-55-8
A British journalist probes the troubled psyche of a notorious killer.
In his first book, Hankinson takes great formal risks in presenting a story that might sustain suspense for
American readers but is well-known in Britain from saturation newspaper coverage and previous books.
The subject is the last week or so in the life of Raoul Moat, a period in which he was released from prison
and proceeded to gun down the new boyfriend of his former girlfriend as well as wounding her and a police
officer. Moat then proceeded to hide out with two friends whom he termed hostages but who were
subsequently convicted as accomplices. The tick-tock narrative is written in both the present tense and the
second person, meaning that Moat is the "you" addressed by the author. Thus, readers get inside the head of
the murderer, thinking his thoughts and explaining his motivations. The approach may well cultivate even
more empathy than a more common first-person narrative, but readers will hardly feel comfortable in
Moat's skin. Obsession leads to plenty of repetition, as he rants about how this is as much his former
girlfriend's fault: for betraying him and shunning him and mocking him and ultimately for costing another
man his life by lying about him. Paranoia runs rampant throughout, as police are out to get him when he has
done nothing wrong, psychiatry fails him (though he often fails to keep appointments), and social workers
are "witches." The context provided by Hankinson, particularly following Moat's death, goes a long way
toward showing how much of this tragedy could have been prevented, how the police failed the victims and
social services failed the troubled killer, and how a disturbed mother and a troubled childhood had left Moat
marked. Ultimately, though, putting both the narrative and readers inside the head of the subject is a gamble
that meets with mixed success.
True crime from a radically different perspective.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Hankinson, Andrew: YOU COULD DO SOMETHING AMAZING WITH YOUR LIFE [YOU ARE
RAOUL MOAT]." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461543/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c89228b9.
Accessed 23 June 2018.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461543
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Confessions of an unjustified sinner
Ben Myers
New Statesman.
145.5300 (Feb. 5, 2016): p41.
COPYRIGHT 2016 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
Full Text:
You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat]
Andrew Hankinson
Scribe, 211pp, 12.99 [pounds sterling]
In July 2010, just weeks after becoming Prime Minister, David Cameron expanded upon his vision for the
"Big Society" that he had first unveiled at the 2009 party conference. It promised a "big advance for people
power", in which individuals would be responsible for their actions. "To be British is to be sceptical of
authority and the powers that be," he told conference. "There is a 'we' in politics, and not just a 'me'."
That same month, just two days after being released from HMP Durham for the assault of a child, the selfemployed
gardener and former doorman Raoul Moat shot and injured his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart
and killed her boyfriend Chris Brown, who he wrongly believed to be a policeman. Moat went on the run,
shooting a policeman at point-blank range, then fleeing to the rural Northumberland town of Rothbury. For
a week, the story of this exotically named, delusional man who left behind a wealth of material, including
letters and four-hour-long Dictaphone recordings, was given joint top billing with Cameron's "Big Society"-
-soon to be as dead and buried as Moat, who, cornered by police after a seven-day hunt, killed himself.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The journalist Andrew Hankinson's depiction of Moat's unravelling is being marketed as biography/true
crime, yet really is a non-fiction novel, in which writer and reader squat inside a mind that moves from
irrational anger and self-pity to despondency. Moat's is a solipsistic narration, in which he is the perennial
victim--of circumstance, enemies, authoritarian bureaucracy, police harassment and past lovers. There is
little room here for the outside world. Like most outlaws, Moat believed that everyone had failed him. "All
my life I wanted death," he laments.
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The real-life Moat story, however, was more than that of a lone fugitive. It was also about rolling news
coverage and Facebook groups, some of which celebrated Moat as a Ned Kelly-type folk hero--a "#ledge".
When Cameron denounced him in parliament he inadvertently elevated Moat to a clearer anti-authoritarian
position: the antithesis of a "Big Society" citizen, in fact. It is also the story of the Northumbria Police force,
which did its very best to show that it had everything under control when it really didn't.
And, bringing an element of farce to a tragedy, it featured the subplot of a thoroughly leathered Paul
Gascoigne--the most exciting and idiosyncratic footballer of his generation--tearing through the countryside
in a taxi with a fishing rod, a dressing gown and a rotisserie chicken in an attempt to bring a sense of calm
to the situation. "All I want to do is shout, 'Moaty, it's Gazza! Where are you?'" he explained en route during
a live radio phone-in. "And I guarantee he will shout his name out: 'I'm here.'" Gascoigne's pantomime
intervention added to the chaos: now another disenfranchised northern male was running amok. The
parallels were evident: Gazza's career had been beset by injury and alcoholism, Moat's bodybuilder's
physique was no longer in prime condition after weight loss in prison. Both were separated from their
families and prone to self-examination. Onlookers knew it could quite easily have been Gazza holed up in
those woods.
Other exponents of the non-fiction novel such as Norman Mailer and Gordon Burn would surely have put
all this in, yet Hankinson chooses not to cover any of the peripheral subplots, instead using a second-person
narrative to burrow deep into Moat's paranoia, sourcing all his text from real material. This narrative
sacrifice in favour of a singular voice gives the book thrust and authenticity of voice, and manages to show
the nuances of a man who was articulate and often capable, and had reached out to social services on many
occasions for help. None of which excuses Moat's action--but it does explain his choices. Where the
tabloids favoured the simplicity of the textbook "coldblooded killer", Hankinson's portrait lets the reader
make his or her own judgement. Clearly Moat was a bully, and yet he was not born that way. Few are.
"There'll be books written about all this, and you'll be made out to be some crazed fucking maniac," he says
to himself, with both foresight and grim resignation.
Elsewhere the semi-fictional Moat brushes over past transgressions and labours over the tiniest slights in
such repetitive, droning detail that the reader's sympathy soon wanes. The book's strength lies in the reallife
Moat's keenness to confess--to be heard, finally, beyond death--through these nocturnal monologues,
recorded in his tent after yet another meal of charred burgers. From these remnants, Hankinson deftly
assembles the man's inner workings, lending credibility to his portrait while, beyond the myopic
commentary, we know, although we don't see it, that the outside world is closing in. Critics might ask: why
give voice to a loser? Perhaps because in the right hands any real-life story is worth telling, and history
should never just record the heroes and victors. The losers play their part, too.
Ben Myers's novel "Beastings" recently won the Portico Prize for Literature
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Myers, Ben. "Confessions of an unjustified sinner." New Statesman, 5 Feb. 2016, p. 41. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A444817866/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=110f3e50.
Accessed 23 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A444817866
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The making of a legend
Sarah Ditum
Spectator.
330.9780 (Feb. 6, 2016): p44.
COPYRIGHT 2016 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
Full Text:
You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life (You Are Raoul Moat)
by Andrew Hankinson,
Scribe, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 240, ISBN 9781922247919
For one week in July 2010, the aspiring spree killer Raoul Moat was the only news. 'Aspiring' because he
didn't actually achieve his violent ambitions: by the time he died, he'd only managed to shoot three people
(four if you include himself) and murder one (two if you count PC David Rathband, who was blinded by
Moat and killed himself four years later).
But he made it, in a way. His self-constructed mythology had all the makings of a folk hero--working-class
man, wronged by his woman, a grudge against the police--and there was a public ready to embrace him.
Floral tributes were left outside his home and at the site of his suicide, and a Facebook page called 'RIP
Raoul Moat You Legend!' attracted over 35,000 likes before it was removed. David Cameron obligingly
ensured Moat's outlaw credentials by calling him a 'callous murderer, full stop' and declaring there should
be 'no sympathy' for him.
Andrew Hankinson's account of the case is a direct challenge to the Prime Minister's words: 'You have nine
days and your whole life to prove you are more than a callous murderer. Go.' The 'you' here is Moat,
because the book is written entirely in the second person, using Moat's own recordings and letters to patch
together the internal monologue of a killer; where Moat's account diverges from the factual record or
clarification is needed, Hankinson adds a commentary within square brackets. We only know what Moat
knew, so there is thankfully no interlude with Gazza and his fishing rod.
This device means that sympathy is inevitable: it is, as a matter of grammatical practicality, impossible to
read a text in the second person without feeling some kind of identification with the 'you'. And this gives
rise to the Dorothea problem. In chapter 29 of Middlemarch, George Eliot breaks off mid-sentence to ask:
'But why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one?' Why always Moat? Or, for that
matter, why always men (Dorothea got the better part of the novel's central consciousness over her
regrettable husband, but that is by no means typical)? And why so often men who kill?
The Boston Strangler, Psycho, Peeping Tom: the mind of a killer is supposedly a terrible place, but a terribly
attractive one too, with a great deal more fiction devoted to understanding male violence than to its victims.
Highly publicised killers inspire more killers, and Moat is an object example. For Moat, as Hankinson tells
us, Derrick Bird (who killed 12 people in Cumbria in June 2010) was 'a sign from God'. As American
school shooters learn each other's lines, critiquing the methods and refining the results of their predecessors,
so too middle-aged northern men with shotguns. Is it possible to write an account, as Hankinson has done,
and not become a script for further murder?
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The answer is yes. Critically, Hankinson is driven by genuine curiosity about his subject. Neither crass
hagiography nor ignorant condemnation could deliver the answers he wants, and Moat's inner life is so
extraordinarily deluded that it's arguable there is no way to understand it without standing inside. But every
time the self-justifying diatribe takes hold, the square brackets tear a hole in the fabrications.
Moat believed he was the victim of a police vendetta; the square brackets tell us no, although he had a
history of petty criminality and violence, especially towards women. Moat believed his girlfriend Sam had
been cheating on him while he was in prison; the square brackets tell us she wasn't (not, of course, that
cheating is a crime to be punished with a gunshot anyway). Moat says in his letters that he never hurt Sam;
the square brackets tell us that he admitted elsewhere to hitting her.
The result is one of cumulative bathos, of which the title is a prime example. On the one hand, you could do
something amazing with your life; but on the other, you're a belligerent paranoiac who refuses to seek
psychiatric help. Moat's head feels like an authentically awful place to be trapped inside: he certainly hated
himself, and by the time you know everything he did, and all the ways he hurt the people around him while
casting himself as the victim, it's easy to sympathise fully with that self-loathing.
Before Moat started his underwhelming spree, at least four people knew what he was planning. Four people
knew he intended to kill his ex-girlfriend and her partner Chris Brown (Moat's one fatality), and none of
them thought to intervene: for them, this proprietorial violence fitted within the realm of the normal. Moat
was an extreme example of something quite ordinary, and You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life
is an extraordinary study of violence, in all its bathos and banality.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Ditum, Sarah. "The making of a legend." Spectator, 6 Feb. 2016, p. 44. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A442443960/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d4db04e9.
Accessed 23 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A442443960
You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] review – a killer’s testimony
A claustrophobic true-crime account in the tradition of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Andrew Hankinson attempts to get inside Moat’s mind
Extract: inside the mind of Raoul Moat
Gavin Knight
Fri 12 Feb 2016 02.30 EST Last modified on Wed 29 Nov 2017 05.58 EST
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Raoul Moat
A product of our culture and society … Raoul Moat. Photograph: Northumbria Police/PA
The Northumbria Police won’t ever forget Raoul Moat. The week of July 2010 when Moat went on the rampage was unprecedented. Moat, a 37-year-old Geordie bodybuilder, was serving a short sentence for assault in Durham prison when his 22-year-old girlfriend Sam dumped him for a younger man. Two days after his release, Moat shot and killed the new boyfriend with a sawn-off shotgun, then turned it on Sam, hospitalising her. He declared war on the Northumbria police and blinded one of their officers, who was sitting unarmed in his car. On the run for seven days, Moat camped out in the woods of Northumberland. TV tracker Ray Mears was called in. Paul Gascoigne turned up during the police stand-off. Surrounded by armed police, Moat shot and killed himself.
The mother of the first victim, Chris Brown, complained at the time that Moat received far more publicity than her own son. An RIP Moat fan club was started up on Facebook. PC David Rathband, unable to cope with sudden blindness, killed himself. Now Andrew Hankinson, a journalist from Newcastle, has constructed a narrative from Moat’s own written and recorded source material. Why devote a book to him?
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His purpose is to show Moat as a product of our culture and society. The author takes us inside the killer’s head without giving the reader the privilege of distance in which to judge and dismiss him. The result is an uncomfortable, claustrophobic read. Hankinson follows the techniques of New Journalism that Truman Capote pioneered in the 1960s, where the levers and tools of fiction were used to make true crime more immersive. He deploys the urgent present tense and the second person. “They release you from prison at 10.55am.” This gives the narrative the feel of an unfolding video game. It also has the familiarity of advertising copy, the “you” of opportunity, which is compounded by the ironic title and cover in the style of a 50s advert.
As we spend 224 pages inside Moat’s head, we look for clues as to what made him snap. What were his influences? What drove him? One of the book’s themes is the bankrupt, outdated ideology of hard-man masculinity. Moat had worried that dating a 16-year-old when he was 31 would end with him getting hurt, but cannot accept being dumped by Sam six years later. Sam goads him that her new man is “younger and harder” than him, that he will knock him on his arse. For a man like Moat, this is the ultimate disrespect; it cannot go unchallenged. His mate Karl Ness, another bodybuilder, finds him a shotgun and helps him put things right. After the shootings Moat feels better than he has in ages. Out in the woods, with friends, he barbeques sausages as if on an awayday.
The book suggests that taunts at men’s masculinity prompt much violence in deprived inner city areas. “Respect” is behind the current spike of shootings in Salford as well as youth knife-crime in London and Glasgow. Moat had a history of violence and anger: a ripped cage-fighter who prayed to God to make him big so he wouldn’t be bullied for being skinny and ginger with grandpa glasses. In HMP Durham he was like a wounded tiger pacing its enclosure.
Moat is presented as an intriguing case study in disintegration, making bad choices then devoting all his intelligence to justifying them in his own head. He is obsessed with presenting his own version of events and prolific in his self-presentation: the evidence includes a 49-page confession, audio recordings made on the run, diaries and lengthy recordings of his 999 calls made after the shootings.
To avoid Moat’s defence being one-sided, Hankinson provides short barristerial challenges in parentheses. The effect is to steadily undermine the killer’s testimony and reveal him as an unreliable narrator. When Moat dismisses his fights with Sam as “a bit of pushing and shoving”, Hankinson lists a shocking history of domestic violence. (He was equally violent with his previous partner, the mother of his two eldest children.) But Moat cannot take responsibility for Sam leaving him.
Hankinson’s reliance on Moat’s own source material is problematic, however, due to the subject’s enormous capacity for self-pity. At times you feel you are on a train journey, trapped listening to him blaming everyone but himself. The council, the police, the system are all out to get him. Even when he makes £10,000 on eBay, he whines about one particular deal for a dodgy £150 trailer. He prides himself on being a “grafter” but is never at home for his kids or family. He becomes so paranoid he takes to recording everything on tape. He dismisses the guilty verdict of a jury and appeals to a higher power: he writes to Jeremy Kyle, offering to take the lie detector on his TV show.
Inside the mind of Raoul Moat
Read more
Hankinson shows how men together can catalyse their own demise. Moat’s friends never question his disastrous choices: Ness sources the shotgun and drives him around. Another mate, known as Sean, stays up late chatting about how good it feels to shoot a cop, planning how to shoot a social worker. Their daft cover story is to pretend to be his hostages. These two close friends and conspirators end up sentenced to 40 and 20 years respectively.
There was an absence of strong male role models in Moat’s past. His biological father left Raoul’s mother during pregnancy and moved to Croydon; he never tried to contact his son. Moat’s stepfather prefers his half-brother Angus. He was brought up by his gran who left Moat’s grandfather, a champion boxer in the army, because he was dangerous. She thought he was trying to push her off a cliff. Moat is the third generation of irresponsible, volatile men: 63% of violent fathers have sons who commit violent crimes.
Moat at one point sought help about his mental health, and was referred, but did not show up for the appointment. In Durham prison he was not the only man failing to cope – during his time inside, there were 46 incidents of self-harm and one suicide.
As it turns out, the only male figure who speaks to Moat with any sense, asking him to think about the future, about his kids, and to talk to him with empathy and understanding, is the trained police negotiator. This is the last conversation he has, and it’s too late.
•You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life (You are Raoul Moat) by Andrew Hankinson (Scribe Publications, £12.99). To order a copy for £10.39, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
•Gavin Knight is the author of Hood Rat. The Swordfish & the Star will be published this spring by Chatto.
You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life (You Are Raoul Moat) review
Andrew Hankinson’s dramatic account of a murderer’s last days, told mostly in the second person, seeks to judge whether his actions were other than vile, says Rob Doyle
Rob Doyle
Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 00:12
First published:
Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 00:12
Book Title:
You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life (You Are Raoul Moat)
ISBN-13:
978-1922247919
Author:
Andrew Hankinson
Publisher:
Scribe
Guideline Price:
£12.99
By the time Raoul Moat shot himself, after being surrounded by police in the Northumbrian woods, he was already a hero to some. This man, who had blasted his ex-girlfriend with a shotgun, murdered her partner, blinded a police officer and then gone on the run was the object of a Facebook shrine with thousands of members.
In common with the London riots a year later, in 2011, the rise of Ukip and perhaps even the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, the mass veneration of a killer seemed a manifestation of England’s deep disquiet: a popular disaffection towards the established order of things, verging on nihilism, in a nation assuming the dimensions of a dystopia.
Told almost entirely in the second person, the journalist Andrew Hankinson’s account of Moat’s dramatic last days is an attempt to judge whether Moat’s actions were anything other than vile and heartless. Does Moat deserve at least some of our sympathy? (Unsurprisingly, David Cameron came down unequivocally on the matter. He told parliament: “As far as I can see it is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story.”) Why did Moat win the applause of a section of the English population by shooting three innocent people?
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The answer is twofold. First, swayed by Moat’s self-justifying pronouncements, some came to see him as the victim of a negligent system. Flowers and notes were left by the riverbank in Rothbury where he made his final stand. (“RIP Raoul. You were not helped and failed by the system massively.”) Second, there was a cinematic, easily romanticised quality to the way Moat evaded capture for a week by a small army of police officers, hiding in the wilderness like Rambo, finally choosing death over surrender.
Hankinson has assembled his taut, uncomfortably thrilling book almost entirely from documents that Moat left behind (including the Dictaphone tapes and the written “murder statement” he made while he on the run) and from records of the authorities and institutions with which he came into conflict.
The result is an unvarnished reconstruction of Moat’s murderous rampage, which allows the facts – and the perpetrator – to speak for themselves. For the most part the author removes himself from the narrative, assuming an editorial role over the documentary materials, yet this reads like fast, fierce pulp fiction.
Having failed as a man, Moat made himself the anti-hero in his own shoot-’em-up: “You walk across the road to the barber’s and ask for a Mohican, like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.” Hours later, ‘You walk over to him. He’s on his hands and knees . . . You shoot him in the head.’
Sympathy, or at least the possibility of it, is established early on, before the bloodshed. A prologue lists Moat’s answers to a questionnaire from the regional department of psychotherapy, from which he was seeking help. Among his “achievements” he includes: “HAVING THE MORALS I HAVE”; “BEING A DAD” and “NOT LOSING THE PLOT AND BEING IN JAIL”.
In the same questionnaire he betrays a dangerous volatility: “LOOK I’M NOW REALLY PISSED OFF BECAUSE THESE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE DISCUSSED IN PERSON . . . [I] SEE THIS AS TOTALLY DISMISSIVE AND UNCARING, AND WAS ABOUT TO CHUCK THESE FORMS IN THE BIN.”
Moat filled out that form in 2008. Two years later he did wind up in jail, for assaulting a child. While he was locked up Sam Stobbart, his young girlfriend and the mother of his daughter, broke up with him. She then became involved with a karate instructor, Chris Brown.
Sam warned Moat that Brown was younger and stronger than him – Moat had frequently beaten her up while they were together, part of a long history of his domestic violence. Moat confided to a fellow inmate that he intended to do serious harm to Stobbart and her new man. The day after his release he posted an ominous Facebook status that ended with the words, “I’m not 21 and I can’t rebuild my life. Watch and see what happens.”
What happened is that, before the day was through, Moat shot Brown and Stobbart in front of Stobbart’s family, seriously wounding her and killing him. Moat later claimed that he meant only to superficially wound Sam, so that she would “get compensation and be set for life without me” – a peculiar form of love, expressed through the barrel of a shotgun.
Aided by two friends, he fled the scene. He made taunting phone calls in which he declared war on the police, then camped out in the woods. His friends come across as witless goons: their ploy was to pretend they were not Moat’s accomplices but his hostages.
One of them sent a letter to his sister, cheerfully boasting that “I AM ACTUALLY SAFER THAN SAFE – BURN THIS LETTER!!!” After Moat’s suicide both of them were put away for decades.
Moat’s next victim was a police officer. David Rathband was in his car when Moat stalked up and shot him in the face. Rathband survived but was left blind. In the aftermath of the crime his marriage collapsed, and in 2012 he hanged himself. “You did that,” Hankinson adds in the book’s damning penultimate paragraph – a rare and necessary instance of overt authorial judgment.
A 6ft 3in former cage fighter, Moat sought to kill as many police officers as he could before being taken down. The 37-year-old was assured of his righteousness in all this; he repeatedly claimed that the police had always been against him, goading and obstructing him when all he wanted was to go straight and raise his children well.
Self-pitying though they are, his recordings and statements are also poignant, lurching between sentimentality and raw desperation (“All my life I’d wanted death”).
Moat was a tormented man with little mastery over his violent urges. His testimony lays bare a retarded moral sense: right until the end he was largely unrepentant of his actions, elated even, and indifferent or oblivious to the pain he had caused. He was a destroyer, not a hero.
For all the grievances and frustrations of his life, Moat made the choice to multiply his miseries rather than to bear them alone. “I’m going to destroy a few lives like you’ve destroyed mine,” he tells a police operator. Secure in his status as victim, he granted himself agency over other people’s suffering.
The final pages bring to light the full extent of Moat’s delusions. Might it be that his paranoia and his furies are evidence of serious mental illness and that “the system” really did fail Raoul Moat? Perhaps. But Moat failed himself as well.
Having sent in the mental-health questionnaire that is transcribed at the start of this book, he was scheduled for a series of appointments with a clinical psychologist. Moat never showed up.
Rob Doyle’s second book, This Is the Ritual, was published in January by Bloomsbury and the Lilliput Press
You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life (You are Raoul Moat) by Andrew Hankinson - book review
This flawed tale fails to get inside the mind of a murderer
Oscar Quine
@oscarquine
Tuesday 16 February 2016 18:37
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Discussions around mental health and criminality often centre on the extent to which we can understand the motivation of an unstable defendant. Were they in their right mind when they committed the crime for which they are being tried? It is a question written into the fabric of the legal system. If mental health issues are proven, a less severe sentence will often be dealt.
In the case of Raoul Moat, such a conclusion could never be reached. The former bouncer, who murdered his ex-girlfriend, her boyfriend and blinded a policeman, took his own life at the end of a five-day manhunt through the countryside surrounding Newcastle.
In his absence, You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life (You Are Raoul Moat) by Andrew Hankinson attempts to answer the question. Reality, it concludes, is rarely black and white: Moat's actions were a product of the dreary, knock-you-down nature of a life lived up against it as much as of the flaws in his psyche.
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Sadly, Hankinson chooses a torturous form through which to express this. You Could Do Something recounts the final days of Moat's life in a second-person stream-of-consciousness attempting to force the reader to inhabit Moat's mind. It works for the first chapter, which begins, “A questionnaire arrives from the Regional Department of Psychotherapy... They want you to complete your answers and send it back...”. Thereafter, the cons of the approach quickly outweigh the pros.
Hankinson states in the author's note that the book is built on primary sources, such as letters Moat wrote to his family in those final days and police reports. However, this research is lost in the stylistic swill. At points, the reader is left guessing what is factual and what is fabricated. At others, Hankinson concedes that Moat is an unreliable witness, that transcripts have been “edited and rewritten” and that the narrative must break for lack of primary sources.
By viewing all through the pinhole of Moat's mind, Hankinson allows no space for analysis. I was left desperate for the insight of a psychologist or criminologist. Worse still, there's no room for the victims' stories nor the media storm that surrounded the manhunt. Arguably, these issues have been dealt with in other books, such as Vanessa Howard's Raoul Moat: His Short Life and Bloody Death. But still, this book does not make for a particularly enjoyable read. With everything shoehorned into Moat's words, the prose lacks the alleviating effects of figurative devices. Instead it is leaden.
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