The Young Poisoners Handbook

Plot

Graham Young has been obsessed with death and the macabre since childhood. He is highly intelligent, with an aptitude for chemistry; he dreams of poisoning as many people as he can. In his teen years, he actually poisons a schoolmate — which made him ill rather than killing him — in order to date a girl his schoolmate was seeing. His conversation with his date involved vivid, graphic descriptions of deadly car accidents. He also reads a comic book account of an event in which the Dutch Resistance killed a whole German army camp in the occupied Netherlands during the Second World War by poisoning their water supply with thallium.

Graham is arrested at the age of 14 outside his home in Neasden after having poisoned his father and stepmother with thallium, killing his stepmother and making his father seriously ill. During the struggle with police, he drops his "Exit Dose" of thallium, which he intended to use to commit suicide should he be caught. He is hospitalised for nine years in an institution for the criminally insane, during which time a psychiatrist works with him in the hopes of rehabilitating him.

Graham's dishonesty becomes evident to the doctor, who can see that Graham is trying to deceive him. Graham apparently has no dreams to share with the psychiatrist so he "borrows" a fellow prisoner's dreams. This source is shut off to him, however, once the fellow prisoner commits suicide. Despite the initial evidence of deceptiveness on Graham's part, the doctor eventually gets him released.

Graham then goes to work in a camera factory and is shown the secret ingredient used in the company's shutter system — thallium. It is not long before Graham starts poisoning people again. He kills two of his workmates by poisoning their tea with thallium stolen from the laboratory, and makes many others ill. For months, the source of the "bug" afflicting the workers at the factory remains a mystery until one unforeseen event leads to Graham's being found out. As a hygiene measure, all the personalised teacups are replaced with uniform ones, leaving Graham unable to poison people selectively. His efforts to memorise which cup is going to which person give him away and his workmates finally realise what is going on.

Graham is arrested soon afterwards and he is later sentenced to a lengthy custodial term, this time in an ordinary prison. He commits suicide by poisoning himself with the "Newton's Diamond" he made in the psychiatric hospital.

Differences between the film and the real case

The Young Poisoner's Handbook is not a strictly factual account of Graham Young's crimes. The film depicts Young committing suicide immediately after his arrest; the real Graham Young died of a heart attack in 1990, at the age of 43. The film insinuates that his ambition in life was to create an untraceable poison based on thallium using his knowledge of chemistry; in reality his ambition was to become an infamous poisoner, an ambition he achieved.