Jan Bednarczyk, 52, told neighbours she had left him and run off with an young Italian lodger.

But while his wife, Jenny, lay dead in the shed, he was trying to find himself an Oriental bride, the Old Bailey was told.

He went on a spending spree using her cash card and bought clothes and a camera, which was used to take a photograph of him standing outside the shed where the body was hidden.

Bednarczyk pleaded not guilty to murder. The court accepted his plea of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

It was only when police became suspicious and arrived to search the three-bedroom semi-detached house in Rose Glen, Kingsbury, north west London, that they found the body.

Police found diary entries

They found a letter and diary entries made by the former printer describing how he attacked his 54-year-old wife in the kitchen on August 19 last year.

He said he struck her around four times on the head with a claw hammer, placed a bin liner over her head and tied an electric flex around her neck.