Justice for Harry Stanley
In 1999, Harry Stanley was walking home with a table leg in a plastic bag. What followed is a tragic case of mistaken identity with fatal consequences.
On a stormy September day in Hackney in 1999, Scottish labourer Harry Stanley went to visit his brother to mend a broken table leg. Having recently recovered from an invasive cancer operation, Harry stopped off at a local pub for a lemonade on the way home and placed the bag with the mended leg on the table. Police subsequently received an erroneous tip-off, leading to a shocking and fatal chain of events. 26 years later, family and local residents are still struggling to process what happened that fateful evening. Producer Tara Darby re-visits the tragedy through interviewees' memories of the night and its aftermath.
New Storytellers presents the work of new radio and audio producers, and this series displays the winners of the Charles Parker Prize 2026 for the Best Student Radio Feature. Tara Darby made this documentary as part of an ‘In the Dark Radio’ Summer course. The judges “found this compelling". They described it as “a meticulously made piece of gripping and tragic history, beautifully recorded and subtly realised...The use of sound was really clever and the whole piece was moving, well researched and put together...Remarkably high quality work.”
Producer: Tara Darby
A Soundscape production for BBC Radio 4
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- Wed 15 Jul 202613:45BBC Radio 4
