ONE of Basingstoke’s most infamous residents will be the focus of a new ITV drama.

ITV announced on June 13 that it has commissioned the four-part drama Ruth, about the life of Ruth Ellis who grew up in Basingstoke and was the last woman to be hanged in Britain in 1955.

Starring Lucy Boynton in the title role, the gripping story will be told over two parallel timelines, with Ruth revealing secret truths about what really happened in the months before she killed her lover, David Blakely

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Ellis, who grew up in Basingstoke and also lived in Baughurst, Tadley and Bramley, shot her lover four times outside a Hampstead pub.

She was convicted of murder and was hanged on July 13, 1955, at Holloway prison in London.

The drama will shed light on the life of one of Britain’s most infamous murderers, depicting Ellis’s entry into a dizzying upper-class London world that promised so much but delivered treachery.

Written by Kelly Jones and produced by Silverprint Pictures, it will follow her glamorous lifestyle as a young nightclub manager, her abusive relationship with the man she later gunned down in cold blood, her arrest, trial and the subsequent legal fight to reprive her before she was hanged aged just 28.

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Ruth is based on Carol Ann Lee’s acclaimed biography A Fine Day for Hanging: The Real Ruth Ellis Story and will explore how the emotional and physical abuse she suffered drove her to commit a terrible crime.

Lucy Boynton, who starred in Bohemian Rhapsody and recently appeared in ITV’s adaption of Agatha Christie’s Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, described the story of Ruth as “fascinating”.

She said: “Both she and this complex case have always evoked a strong reaction, and with Kelly’s insightful scripts I’m looking forward to bringing a new perspective to both familiar audiences as well as those who are unaware of her mark on British history.”

The powerful mystery of what compelled Ellis to take the life of a man she was in a passionate but toxic and volatile relationship with will reveal that there was more to this crime of passion than Ellis was prepared to say.

Her silence, and resistance to speak of what happened between her and Blakely, was far more complex than she admitted.

Ruth’s solicitor, the low-status but intelligent and sensitive John Bickford, realised some of what she suffered and believed they must make a case for provocation.

He began his own investigation uncovering details that could have saved her life, had the facts been aired in court.

Ellis was born on October 9, 1926, in Rhyl, Wales. Her father, a cellist, made a good living playing for the silent movies in Wales.

In the early 1920s he worked on ocean liners and became quite wealthy but due to the innovations in sound movies he found himself out of work.

The Grand Theatre (The Haymarket) in Basingstoke still ran silent movies so, at the age of three, Ruth, along with her father, Arthur Neilson (previously Hornby), mother, sister and brothers moved to Basingstoke where her father continued his career in music.

The family moved to rented accommodation in Bramley after becoming destitute when Arthur lost his work with the arrival of sound movies in the town.

He eventually secured a job at Park Prewett hospital in Basingstoke as a bookkeeper and the family moved to Dunsford Crescent, one of the houses allocated to employees.

In 1938 the family lived in a cottage in Sherfield-on-Loddon, where Ellis went to school.

Aged 12, she moved to Fairfields School in Basingstoke.

The family left Basingstoke in 1941 when Ellis was 14.