Soon after he was charged with murder in 1969, Charles Manson achieved his ambition. He appeared on the cover of Life magazine, looking bug-eyed and bonkers, beneath the headline “The Love and Terror Cult”. He had become a celebrity.

The Manson story was about sex, drugs and the manipulation of vulnerable people into committing acts of terrible violence. In the sweep of American cultural history he came to symbolise the moment the hippy Age of Aquarius turned nasty, the end of the counterculture.

But for Manson himself it was always about fame, something he almost attained legally and cultivated assiduously — a process that started before the murders and continued during the trial, in prison and even following his death in 2017 at the age