My father’s diary left me wondering whether he was a killer

Saul Wordsworth’s father Christopher may have taken a terrible secret to his grave. He knew all about his quick temper and explosive outbursts of rage. But a set of his diaries inherited by Saul hinted at something altogether darker. The passage she highlighted referred to hiding a body until a search party had gone.

Growing up in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, Saul knew his father as a teller of tall tales. Christopher was also a frustrated novelist whose lifelong ambition tantalised, tortured and ultimately eluded him. Saul, 51, reasoned that had his father really murdered somebody, he would not have risked writing it down. Saul, who lives in north London, began disentangling fact from fiction for a six-part podcast series, Devil in the Wilderness.

He built a picture of a brilliant but troubled man with a chaotic and disturbing past. The pair#39;s relationship was often fractious. He died in 1998, aged 83, in his favourite chair. He also became a vessel for his father#39;s thwarted ambitions.

Sometimes kind and very funny, Christopher was also prone to terrifying anger. Everything was turned up to 11,#34; says Saul. He was a man of the people" Christopher’s diaries date from 1953 to 1963, when he was divorced, penniless and living on trout and potatoes in a remote cottage in the wilds of north Wales. Saul had known of the diaries for years but had never seen them, imagining them in a trunk in his father#39;s study.

He recruited a transcriber called Emma to help him read them. Christopher’s diary entries reveal a man at a low ebb. He writes: “I have arrived in my late 30s as nearly naked as is possible for a man to be, in the practical worldly sense,#34; He adds: “It would have been impossible to have devised a more complete downfall in fiction” Saul learned that, aged three, his father was left with a relative in Oswestry, Shropshire, while his parents returned to India. Christopher burned through a large inheritance and was reduced to begging from friends and family.

He even tried to sell his sister#39;s house from under her while she was on holiday. Eleanor Brooks, by then in her mid-90s, told him: #34;I wondered if he was actually afraid of something catching up with him. That if he does record it, and somehow someone comes across the diaries, he would be answerable. He would talk about a misspent youth.

but also [there was] a sense that this is a man with a heavy weight on his conscience. Despite the heavy subject matter, Saul says making the podcast was a fulfilling and #34;tremendously joyous experience. Although many of its revelations reflect badly on his father, Saul does not entirely condemn him. But questions remain, and he plans further research.

You can hear more about this story on Justin Dealey#39;s show on BBC Three Counties Radio from 10:00 GMT on Sunday 24 March. But there were few more unknowable than my dad. You can also follow East of England news on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.