Peninsula of Lies

Book excerpt: Peninsula of Lies is an enthralling investigation of a bizarre life that begins in Kent, England with the birth of an illegitimate baby and ends in south Carolina, USA with a sex-change and a scandal.Edward Ball unwraps a mystery that has fascinated a succession of authors in the past decade. Who was Gordon Langley Hall, the illegitimate son of two servants at Sissinghurst Castle (home of author Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, diplomat, author and politician)? Gordon becomes the recipient of the millions of an American heiress, author of biographies (including the eccentric English actress, Margaret Rutherford, the original screen 'Miss Marple'), and moves to Charleston, south Carolina. There Gordon changes sex and reinvents him/herself as Dawn Langley Hall. The mystery deepens when Dawn marries a young black mechanic (the matrons of the still-segregated Charleston are appalled), appears around the town apparantly pregnant a few months later claims that the daughter she is seen pushing around the town in a pram is actually her own.Edward Ball, who won the American National Book Award for Slaves in the Family, investigates Hall's story and in the final chapter offers his solution.