Robert Shiels

Many of the earlier books on famous crimes may require to be revisited, and this comprehensive new book by Halle Rubenhold demonstrates why. A standard description of the events of and around Dr Crippen’s activities constituted "one of the most infamous murders of the twentieth century".

‘County lines’ is a sub-genre, but not a lesser one, of the lucrative business involving controlled drugs. It is constituted by goods being moved from across police and other domestic boundaries. The transportation is sometimes (although not always) by children, vulnerable people or othe

The public must surely wish to have a comprehensive narrative of the course of conduct by a medically qualified person resulting in the deaths of many babies, and they have it with this book. The shock of the whole scenario is not of a fanciful or unique set of circumstances, regrettably, as similar

John Hill Burton was an advocate from 1831 and he became a significant figure in nineteenth century Scottish thought. His contribution is reassessed in this impressive study by an independent scholar. Burton’s practice may not have amounted to much, and in 1854 he was appointed secretary to th

The study of crime in a specific area is hardly a new idea: famously, Jack House wrote The Square Mile of Murder, which has its own Wikipedia page, about four classics of the genre in Glasgow. Neither is the study of crime in wartime a new idea, as can be seen in the bibliography to this new contrib

The "story of law’s reasonable person" is one that has "many beginnings and no end", according to Professor Valentin Jeutner, of Lund University, Sweden. Identifying the concept of such a person is not an easy task, given, as the professor discovered, there are over 250 statutes and 10,000 cou

Events previously known as the ‘English Civil War’ are now given different titles because of a general recognition by historians that separate events elsewhere collectively constituted a single entity. Some historians have described events as ‘The British Civil Wars’. The war

The purportedly whole story of the grim events at 10 Rillington Place, London has been offered to the public in different forms over the years but what version is complete, and separately, an accurate one? It is not difficult to see why the appalling events there draw in new commentators with each g

Robert Shiels completes his look at the life of Sir Thomas Thornton LLD. Thornton also interested himself in the field of education, as clerk to the school board gave him an intimate knowledge of the various education acts. He was consulted by Miss Baxter and Dr Boyd Baxter about the establishment o

Robert Shiels looks in two parts at the life of Sir Thomas Thornton, LLD, solicitor, Dundee, to whom the law firm Thorntons traces its roots. There was a time when solicitors were often referred to as writers, procurators, law agents or advocates (as in Aberdeen) and also more simply as men of busin

If the interested reader thought that just about everything that could have been written about British intelligence agencies had been published, then this new history will probably be a revelation, writes Robert Shiels. From the founding of the Secret Service Bureau in 1909, women worked in every ar

Messrs Reeves and Friedman with this study present a modern sociological view of ‘the British elite’. Who are the purported elites, or, following one definition, the ruling minority?

All books require to have a focus and a boundary to their subject-matter. The author "accepts" the Victorian use of the term "female detective" was a broad one, initially modest roles developing in to more serious occupations with personal accountability in court. Her book is "unusual in bringing re

The military-industrial complex of the United States was the subject of a chilling warning by President Eisenhower and a new book reveals how Silicon Valley has morphed to make it ever more deadly. On one view, a better title for this book might be ‘The politics of public procurement’ as

With the end of Soviet Russia, there was little in the way of precedent or planning for the political class to follow in the move to a new society and economy. A socialist state does not plan for its own demise. There was in existence a system of public administration and legislation, but the moves