Where is Brian Masters now? Des' real-life author and the 5 haunting words he used for Dennis Nilsen
Brian Masters received "hundreds" of letters from one of Britain's most infamous serial killers
Brian Masters is a bona fide serial killer expert, having written several biographies about notorious murderers – including Dennis Nilsen.
Des, the ITV true crime drama starring David Tennant as Nilsen, recently dropped on Netflix. It mostly takes place after his arrest, following the police’s investigation and Nilsen’s confessions and cooperation.
Nilsen also has regular meetings with an author during the series: Brian Masters, played by Jason Watkins.
This is exactly what happened in real life, with Nilsen’s testimony leading to Masters’ first biography about a serial killer.
Who is Brian Masters?
Brian Masters is a British author. While he’s best known for his work on serial killers, Masters has also written studies of French poets, the British aristocracy, and his memoir.
His most famous book is Killing for Company: The Case of Dennis Nilsen, a bestseller billed as a “portrait of the man who worshipped death.”
While being an account of Nilsen’s murders, it also features writings from the killer himself and theories about why he resorted to such indifferent brutality.
Masters went on to write seven more books:
- Gary (1990), which focuses on his experiences with a disturbed and violent teenager
- The Life of E. F. Benson (1991), a biography of the eponymous novelist and historian
- The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer (1993), a biography of the infamous serial killer
- She Must Have Known: Trial of Rosemary West (1996), a biography of the British serial killer
- The Evil That Men Do (1996), an investigation into the “nature of good and evil”
- Thunder in the Air: Great Actors in Great Roles (2000), an exploration of actors playing real-life figures
- Getting Personal (2002), his memoir
Where is Brian Masters now?
Brian Masters is now 86 years old, and he’s believed to be retired and living somewhere in the UK.
He spoke to several news outlets in 2020 around the original release of Des. Masters hasn’t given any interviews since.
As for what he thought of Des, he was incredibly impressed by Tennant’s portrayal. “This was a replica of the man I had known,” he told The Telegraph.
“And on film, with cunning camera angles and direction, the resemblance wandered into the uncanny, unnerving.
“It must have cost [Tennant] dearly. But when you have played Hamlet, I suppose you are well and truly broken in. It was, above all, an honest performance.”
How did he meet Dennis Nilsen?
Brian Masters has admitted he wasn’t always interested in serial killers. However, that changed when he became aware of Dennis Nilsen’s crimes.
As he told The Sun, headlines about Nilsen’s house in North London – branded his “House of Horrors” – caught his attention.
“It seemed inexplicable that Nilsen, an articulate and hard-working employment agency officer, should secretly pursue the gruesome task of strangling, drowning, and dismantling the bodies of total strangers,” he explained.
Masters observed that the vitriolic and horrified response to the case was obscuring any learnings, so he wrote to Nilsen to ask if he could investigate the murders.
“I made it clear that I intended to undertake a deep search into painful thoughts… then came his astonishing reply, passing the burden on to my shoulders,” Masters said.
Nilsen sent Masters “hundreds” of letters over the following years, and the author met Nilsen regularly in prison.
Masters was never under the illusion that they were friends. “He was always talking at me, rather than with me, like a programmed, fully rehearsed stand-in for a spontaneous human,” he said.
They would meet long after his conviction; it was 10 years, to be exact, until they stopped seeing each other. Masters suspected it was because he’d compared Nilsen to Dahmer.
In his book, Masters described Nilsen as an “extreme instance of human possibility”.
He also told The Sun that people often ask him if he thinks Nilsen is evil.
“I was surprised to hear the judge use this word in his summing-up at the Old Bailey,” he said.
“I had always thought such a word should be banished from any court which deals with evidence-based, ascertainable facts, not emotional hunches.”
Nilsen’s actions can’t (and shouldn’t) be “understood”, according to Masters. “The word is a minefield, for it carries the implication of sympathy. I preferred to see my job as to ‘comprehend’ in order the better to explain,” he added.
Who plays Brian Masters in Des?
Jason Watkins plays Brian Masters in Des. You may recognise him from his roles in the Nativity films, The Crown, and W1A.
He also starred in Line of Duty season 4 as Tim Ifield. No spoilers for those who’ve not seen it, but he’s a forensic coordinator, and things don’t go well for him.
Speaking to The i Paper, Watkins described Masters as a “colourful, eloquent, and complicated person.”
Watkins also noted another reason Nilsen’s case piqued Masters’ interest. “He was very disturbed by certain media reports that conflated being gay with being dysfunctional, thus Nilsen was a murderer because he was gay,” he explained.
The actor believes that Masters, who’s gay himself, “needed to redress that valance, because sexuality had nothing to do with Nilsen’s actions – it was about control”.
Read more: ‘Chilling’ Dennis Nilsen survivor interview resurfaces as Des hits Netflix chart
