Robert Shiels

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

Family lawyers and child law litigators are not the only ones concerned with children: criminal lawyers, probably somewhat behind sociologists and criminologists, will have noted the number of young children arrested and charged with serious crimes. The police and court activity following widespread

There is an aphorism along the lines of history is past politics and present politics is future history and that might well be a suitable introduction to a new book on the Spycatcher affair. Stated briefly, for some years after 1985, the United Kingdom government commenced a succession of expensive,

The Editor of the Scots Law Times was not happy in January 1947. In an early issue of his periodical he commented that statutes "descend upon us" from Westminster in "an ever-growing avalanche". Reproducing these new statutes was a part of the publication, and their quantity alone was then so large,

Remotely piloted aircraft, ‘RPA’, were used initially for surveillance but, increasingly and cost-effectively, are of value when armed with guided weapons for precise targeting. Apparently, ‘drone’ is a pejorative term. For generations there have been aviation lawyers but per

The monograph The Signature in Law: From the Thirteenth Century to the Facsimile explores the judicial development of the concept of the signature from the thirteenth century to the age of the facsimile transmission and telex; that is, down to 1990. The concept of the signature is considered in its

Professor Richard Overy asserts in the preface that his book is "an impertinence". He concedes that because of his narrow expertise, "the world’s wars waged during the 1930s and 1940s". That important area is in contrast to the many thousands of years covered in the book most of which are beyo