Marian Partington is in her early 50s. She grew up in Gloucestershire and studied English in Manchester and London. In December 1971 her younger sister Lucy disappeared. In the next 20 years Marian brought up two children, became a homeopath, and settled in Wales with Nick Salt, son of the broadcaster Olive Shapley, with whom she had a third child. In 1994, Lucy Partington's body was among those found at Fred and Rosemary West's home. Marian's way through was to try and find words for her experience of Lucy's life and death, which culminated in her article "Salvaging the Sacred" for the Guardian in May 1996. From 1997-1999 she was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to continue with her quest to find peace without denying human atrocity.
"On one retreat I decided that I should try to forgive the Wests, and the first thing I felt when I got home was murderous rage. If you're going to forgive, I think you've got to get to the depth of the enormity that you're trying to forgive. Forgiveness, in this case, began with me experiencing murderous rage."
"I think grace is something that's with us all the time. So the question is, why do some people lose touch with it, like the Wests did? And how can we create the conditions for it to flourish?"