Why I Had to Murder My Mother: Wandsworth author Katharine Leppard’s Unflinching Memoir of Family Turmoil.
A story of love, hate and power, and how a mother tried to control her daughter’s life for over five decades.
Aged just eight, Katharine’s world falls apart when her mother discovers her father’s affair. As the matriarch gathers strength, in reaction to her husband’s betrayal, the family wilts beneath her. But Katharine loves her mother and continues to support her, impressed by her determination, style, wit and charisma.
From the breakdown of ‘normal’ family life in 1964, Katharine begins a super-strict, military-style upbringing at home and boarding school, followed by expulsion in the seventies and total rebellion in the eighties; a career in the music industry; and her on-going struggle with her sexuality. Meanwhile her parents battle on with their own deeply broken relationship through rapidly declining old-age health issues and, as a result, Katharine is thrown right back into the centre of it all.
It’s not until her father’s death that Katharine has a light-bulb moment and her resentment and rage at her mother causes her mental stability to get rocked to the core. Can she control herself or is she going to murder her mother?
Katharine Leppard grew up with a ‘privileged’ background but left home at eighteen with a police escort. A career spent in the music industry but also five decades of trying to get control of her life. Twelve years in the writing, it’s only now, two years since her mother’s death, that she feels able to tell this story.
Katharine explains: “I wrote this book for cathartic reasons – I had so much original written material – letters, diaries etc (spanning 60 years). In order to mentally survive, I spent a short time seeing a therapist who said to me “express the need to get it out, to reflect to yourself the truth of the situation and to hold that truth in the written form”. Also to share aspects of this story that may help daughters AND mothers going through similar issues, a motivation that was very important to me.”
RELEASE DATE: 28/02/2025 ISBN: 9781836281801 Price: £10.99
