Adrian Greenwood

The Wind in the Willows Murder, a documentary about the murders, aired on 19 July 2017 on Channel 4 as part of the Catching a Killer series.

Adrian Mark Greenwood (October 1973 – 6 April 2016) was a British historian, biographer, author, and art dealer, with a particular interest in nineteenth-century British military history. As well as hundreds of articles on antiques and collecting, he wrote two books on military history.

Greenwood was last seen alive at the Sainsbury's supermarket in Oxford Road, Kidlington on 5 April 2016. He was murdered the next day, and his body found by his cleaner at his home on Iffley Road the following day, 7 April. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and the cause of death was given as "multiple stab wounds" with more than 30. He was 42 years old.

A second person, a 50-year-old Peterborough man, Michael Danaher, was subsequently arrested on 10 April on suspicion of murder. On 12 April 2016, Danaher was charged with murder, and remanded into custody the following day. He placed The Wind in the Willows for sale on eBay the day after Greenwood's murder.

After leaving Imperial College, Greenwood began buying British Rail lost property – umbrellas, mobile phones, coats, and prams – and selling them at car boot sales around London. He soon moved on to antique furniture.

In 2011, Greenwood retired from dealing to concentrate on writing. His first book, Victoria's Scottish Lion, a biography of Sir Colin Campbell, received very positive reviews. It is the first major biography of Campbell since 1880. "I first came across him 25 years ago when I was doing History 'A’ Level", explained Greenwood, "I couldn't understand why he wasn't more famous. Over the years I kept seeing his name in books on the Victorian army, by historians like Trevor Royle and Saul David, and he seemed by far the most brilliant general of his age, yet no one had looked at his career thoroughly for a century or more. Then, as I found out more about him, the idea of writing the story of this working class maverick, riling the Victorian establishment, became irresistible. As one reader said to me, 'You wonder why you haven't heard of this man before'."

In November 2010, one of Greenwood's first edition Harry Potter books was stolen from a gallery in Woodstock, a theft which caught the public imagination and was widely reported. After Greenwood appeared on ITV and BBC explaining how difficult the book would be to sell on, the thief panicked and abandoned the book in a carrier bag outside a branch of Boots in Abingdon. The thief was subsequently arrested and jailed.

In 2000 he began selling books online. "I was lucky I caught the right moment. You could go to an auction and buy a tea chest of books for £10, and then put them online for £10 each. The trouble was I ended up with five garages full with 25,000 books, so I started buying more selectively, and dealing in rare and antiquarian titles."

Then in 1998 he sent his first article to the Antiques Bulletin, and it was published. From then on he began writing for most of the British antiques and collectables magazines, as well as several interior design and heritage titles.