Teacher Mark Parnham wept silently as a murder trial heard his account of the row that led to his wife's death.

Lewes Crown Court saw a video tape of a police interview in which Parnham, 36, confessed to killing wife Jillian, who had been having an affair with a work colleague.

Parnham said he hit Jillian repeatedly on the head with a metal bar after she taunted him about her lover, Chris Worth.

All three worked as teachers at Millais girls' secondary school in Horsham. Parnham denies murder.

In the police interview he told Detective Constable Howard Bostock he had suspected for weeks his wife was having an affair with Mr Worth, 47.

He told police they had been looking through photos when a heated argument broke out over her affair.

He said he had called mother-of-two Jillian a tart and said he would fight her for custody of their two young boys.

He alleged Jillian had threatened to tell people Parnham had pushed her down the stairs. He said she picked up a metal bar he had brought home from school and began hitting him with it.

Parnham told the detective: "I snatched it off her and hit her. I was just lashing out and I just hitting her on the head.

"She said 'That's right. Now you have hit me, you have attacked me. You will never get the boys because you are a wife-beater'.

"I just dropped the bar in the hall. I turned towards the door and she hit me on the back of the head. She must have picked up the bar. I went down on my knees. She must've hit me about four times.

"I turned round and lashed out with my foot to get her away. I just got up and pushed her and grabbed her. I just started hitting her and hitting her and hitting her and hitting her."

Later, the jury heard Parnham describe how he ransacked the house to make it look as if there had been a violent burglary.

He said: "I just thought if I made it like a break-in or something ... I threw some cupboards open and threw things on the floor. I just went mad.

"I found myself looking at her body. I had done all this and I thought she was dead. God, I don't deserve to live.

"I have lost everything. I have lost my wife and my boys are going to be taken away and I am never going to see them again. What am I going to do?

"They are going to know I have killed their mum. I just went mad. I just thought: I can't lose my boys. I couldn't believe I had done it.

"They are my life and I loved them so much and they are gone now and they are going to want me and I am not going to be there for them. I don't know how they are going to get to sleep or anything.

"I was just out of my head. I killed the woman I loved."

The trial continues.