The Unfortunate Lunatic

Throughout her childhood, Tess Redgrave knew she had a ‘mad’ grandmother who made repeated visits to a mental asylum. But it wasn’t until her thirties, years after her Nanie had died and in the depths of her own crippling depression, that Tess was prompted to find out more.

What she unearthed was an explosive family story of madness and secrecy that stretched back to nineteenth-century New Zealand and to a man referred to by the courts as ‘an unfortunate lunatic’. While the discovery …