‘I can’t not make him angry’ Annabel Rook told her friend in an audio message played to jurors.
A charity worker said of her partner “I can’t not make him angry”, a month before he allegedly murdered her, a court has heard.
Crossrail worker Clifton George, 45, killed charity worker Annabel Rook, 46, at their home in Dumont Road, Stoke Newington, north London, before starting a fire which triggered a gas canister blast.
George admits manslaughter and arson on June 16 last year, but has denied murder and blames the killing on a loss of self-control.
He has claimed the gas explosion was one of several suicide attempts he made that evening after punching, strangling, and stabbing Ms Rook around 22 times.
The daughter of retired Old Bailey judge, Peter Rook, was the co-founder of a London-based social enterprise called MamaSuze, which supports refugee and migrant women with art and drama activities and workshops.
Examples of George’s alleged “wild temper”, which he has repeatedly denied having, were put to him during cross-examination at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Wednesday.
In a voice note sent to her friend on May 12 2025, Ms Rook described George becoming angry because she did not clean his knives properly.
The message, played to jurors and the busy public gallery, said: “He really lost it at me on Saturday… as I was just saying to him… very gently saying, ‘please, please stop shouting at me.’”
She added: “He was just getting more and more worked up about these knives because I haven’t cleaned them properly, he kept saying things to me (like) you’re a liar, you’re a liar Annabel.”
Ms Rooke continued: “I can’t not make him angry, it’s always going to happen.
“I’ve made him angry because I haven’t dried up his knife. For me it just feels too volatile”, she told her friend, adding: “I just know in my gut it’s not right”.
Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC put to him that “there’s a knife on the side, so what?” and “you just pick it up, you wipe it clean with a cloth and you move on”.
The defendant said “there wasn’t a big argument about it” and denied that he had managed to turn an issue about cleaning into an “argument about her being a liar”.
Their relationship was crumbling and George said the couple had argued before he stabbed her.
During the row, Ms Rook had pushed his head back and he “just lost control”, he claimed.
George told the court: “I attacked Annabel, I attacked her – I threw, I believe, I threw three or four punches at her.
“I know that she fell back because then I was on top of her and I had my hands around her neck, I was strangling her.
“I don’t know what was going through my head.”
He continued: “I don’t recall going into the kitchen, but I would have done because that’s where the knives were.
“All I can recall is Annabel standing there, by the bay window, and she had blood on her chest and on her face.”
Mathew Sherratt KC, defending, asked where the blood came from, and George said: “Where she had been stabbed, she had been stabbed by me.”
The defendant said he had at the time believed he stabbed her four or five times.
He continued: “I remember standing there and I was shocked, and I was like maybe two or three yards away from her, then she started walking towards me with her hands out, I backed away.”
Ms Rook then “fell to her knees with her hands in the air”, he said.
George said he dropped the knife, telling jurors: “I just couldn’t believe it, she was dead, I could see it in her eyes, she was dead.”
George said that immediately after the killing “I kneeled down in front of Annabel’s body and I just started to cry, I couldn’t believe it”.
He hung his head in the witness box as he described kneeling by her body and crying, where he said he remained for about 20 minutes.
The defendant, who wore a grey suit, said he took the alleged murder weapon and cut his wrists.
He washed the blood off in the shower and changed into clean shorts and a T-shirt before taking medication and drinking whiskey, he claimed.
George told jurors: “I just wanted to die, I was in pain, I just wanted to die.”
He then spent five or 10 minutes sat on the stairs on the phone to his brother, he said.
During the call, George “started to get really upset” and told his sibling that he would “get off the phone”, he told the trial.
The defendant said he passed out and then started to cut himself again, before taking a gas canister from the garden pizza oven and using it to cause an explosion in the basement in another attempt to end his life.
Nothing happened at first but as he turned around the explosion “blew me across the house, I went flying, straight across the house, and I landed by the kitchen table”, he claimed.
He said: “I don’t know how long I was on the floor for but the next thing I remember was I was trying to get up but I couldn’t really move my arms and legs.”
George added: “I was just sort of squirming around, my ears were ringing.”
Emergency crews and his neighbour arrived and George was taken to hospital.
The trial continues.
