A man was sentenced to 26 months in prison after threatening and attacking his wife in Harpenden.

Christopher Storton, 37, whose last known address was in Newark, Nottingham, pleaded guilty to assault by beating, battery, affray, threatening his wife with violence and threatening to kill her.

Storton’s wife found out that he had been having an affair and confronted him as they walked from Harpenden train station towards their home on June 16 last year.

Daniel Higgins, prosecuting, said: “He switched from being reasonable to being aggressive and intimidating, shouting things like ‘you pushed me too far’ and ‘just you wait until we get back, I’ll kill you’.

“He was manhandling her. He tried to drag her and grabbed her with both hands and threw her to the floor. She went backwards and her heard smashed on the pavement. He mocked her by mimicking a noise like her screaming.”

Storton dragged her into their home, where he held a needle of a drug for treating heroin withdrawal to her leg and threatened to inject her with it. He also opened up a packet of razor blades and threatened to slit both her wrists and throat and his own.

Police arrived and Storton cut his own arms with the blades until they were able to defuse the situation.

On June 22, Storton was taken into custody after wielding a knife at his mother’s house in Nottingham.

Andrew Kerry, mitigating, said: “He is extremely fond of his wife. He does find it very difficult to accept that he has behaved like that towards her. He has an emotional personality disorder. He has a drug dependency that affects his behaviour - he is and has been suicidal and he is a self-harmer.

“He is somebody who is remorseful. He desperately wants to improve things.”

Storton has multiple previous convictions, most recently for shoplifting and resisting a police officer in August 2017.

Judge Nigel Lithman said: “Just as interesting as what I’ve been told about your offending is what I’ve noticed about your behaviour today. You have interrupted proceedings in cases you have pleaded guilty for to say ‘it’s a lie’.

“You say that you are fond of your wife, but you have a strange way of showing it.”