Macabre British cases, told with pub-style bite.
Twisted Britain tells British crime stories with a loose, conversational rhythm and a darkly curious eye for historical detail. Cases move from poisonings and mountain deaths to letters, missing wives, and child murder, with humor used as release rather than decoration.
PRESS PLAY
Twisted Britain is a British true crime show with a strong taste for historical oddities, awkward evidence, and cases that refuse to sit neatly. It is chatty. The episodes often begin with everyday banter, recording mishaps, travel talk, pub atmosphere, or jokes about the hosts' own confusion before moving into murders, poisonings, disappearances, and criminal investigations. That contrast gives the show its shape. A case such as the Littlehampton letters becomes more than a scandal about obscene notes, because the episode tracks class judgment, police preconceptions, witness interviews, and the arrival of a Scotland Yard investigator. The Richard Taylor episode is heavier. It follows a child's murder, suspicion around two boys, a knife, a workhouse connection, and the disturbing choices made during the investigation. Goatfell brings a different texture, with an island search, a body found near a mountain path, missing possessions, and enough uncertainty to leave the telling unsettled. The Teacup Poisoner arc is longer and more procedural. Across its parts, the show follows poisoning, family dread, workplace illness, deaths mistaken for disease, and the eventual importance of forensic developments. Mamie Stuart's story adds bigamy, vanished movements, a trunk left in a hotel, Scotland Yard, and the legal problem of pursuing a murder case without a body. The show also makes room for interviews and convention episodes, including a conversation with Dr. Shahom Das about forensic psychiatry and serious violence. It does not posture as polished expertise. The hosts openly describe themselves as fascinated rather than expert, which helps the show feel like a case discussion among people who have done the reading and still want to argue through the uncomfortable parts. The humor can be coarse in spirit, but the editorial engine is curiosity. It notices procedure. It notices bad assumptions. It notices when a detail is too strange to ignore. The result is a macabre, informal route through British criminal history, best suited to listeners who like their true crime researched, conversational, and willing to sit with uncertainty.
Made for: For listeners who like historical British true crime with conversational pacing, dark humor, and attention to investigative detail. It suits people comfortable with grim cases when the storytelling leaves room for skepticism and odd human texture.
What sets it apart: Twisted Britain stands apart through its mix of case research, informal host chemistry, and interest in the strange edges of British criminal history. The show often treats police procedure, social judgment, and forensic turns as seriously as the central crime.
A fortnightly podcast about UK true crime with a touch of the weird and the macabre. Hosted by Bob and Ali sat in The Settle Inn in Stirling, they take it week about to tell each other a criminal tale from British history, expect weird tales, dodgy history lessons oh and there's always someone drinking in the background!
Headphones unplugged, Scotland Yard doing the legwork: your kind of crime chat?
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A filthy-letter case gains focus when Inspector George Nicholls starts testing what others accepted.
Twisted Britain's single-episode look at the Littlehampton case works best when it settles into the filthy letters, the shaky assumptions around Rose Gooding, and the gaps in the early police work before Inspector George Nicholls enters the frame.
A graveyard exhumation turns Richard's death into a stark, unsettling case.
Richard's death is framed through the village of Stroud, Kent, as Twisted Britain follows the investigation toward John and James Bell, two brothers already linked to the boy.
A suspected fall on Goatfell grows less settled once the landscape, stone dike, and missing possessions come into focus.
A death on Goatfell begins with the possibility of a fall, then steadily becomes a problem of terrain, concealment, and missing belongings. The hosts trace the search for Edwin Rose to a body found beneath a boulder, hidden from easy view by a small stone dike built from nearby…
Fred's worst suspicion becomes undeniable when detectives arrive and an ordinary kitchen turns into the scene of an arrest.
Part 4 centers on the point where Fred's private fear can no longer be held at a distance. Detectives Reese and Marsh come to his Kent home, and the arrest plays out with plain, bleak force: Fred sees them, grasps the reason for the visit, and directs them to the kitchen, where…
A dark calendar of consequential cases.
True crime with blunt questions and rough edges.
Appalachian case files, told from the record.
Southern cases, sharp context, steady storytelling.
Historical mysteries built from the smallest clues.
Twisted Britain’s “Episode 111 - Littlehampton lible” covers the Littlehampton poison-pen scandal in the early 1920s, where Rose Gooding, her neighbours the Swans, and a stream of obscene postcards became a local obsession.
Twisted Britain’s Episode 110 follows the 1831 killing of 13-year-old Richard Taylor after he walked nine miles from Stroud to Aylesford for a weekly parish allowance of nine shillings.
Twisted Britain covers the 1889 death of Edwin Rose on Goatfell, the highest mountain on the Isle of Arran, after he climbed with John Laurie and was never seen alive again.
Twisted Britain’s Episode 108 follows the final stretch of the Teacup Poisoner case, where the hosts revisit how a man released from Broadmoor in 1971 kept poisoning co-workers at John Hadland Limited in Bovingdon.
Twisted Britain Episode 107 continues the Teacup Poisoner case from his release from Broadmoor on 4 February 1971 to his new life in Slough and Bovingdon.
Graham Young's confession acknowledged poisoning his family but denied using thallium, a claim Bob Dale and Ali Downey scrutinize against their account of Molly's death.
Twisted Britain’s “The Teacup Poisoner part 1” traces Fred’s son’s childhood in postwar Britain, including a car accident around age eight and an intense interest in poisons.
This episode of Twisted Britain features the hosts introducing the show and reading advertisements before delving into a British true crime story.
Hosts Bob and Ali interview forensic psychiatrist Dr.
A podcast episode where hosts Bob and Ali discuss a true crime story from British history, featuring a guest from the True Crime Enthusiast.
A special episode of Twisted Britain where the host is joined by Adam from the UK True Crime Podcast to discuss a British true crime case.