Features

The fourth in Dr Fiona Westwood's series has just been published and is a must for any solicitor taking the nurturing of young lawyers or their own professional development seriously. Following Achieving Best Practice-shaping professionals for success (2001), Accelerated Best Practice-implementing s

Churchill and Ireland

Ross Harper remembers Ross Harper, as author of this biography, certainly needs no introduction to Scottish lawyers given the number of legal roles, both in Scotland and at the International Bar Association, which he undertook during his lengthy career. That career included academia and the judiciar

Our ideas of Paris during the war may well have been shaped from the film Casablanca. "Well, Rick, we’ll always have Paris…" Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) says. But I would doubt few, if any of us, would have paused to consider what Paris actually meant for those living there in the period of the Second

Advocate Stephen O'Rourke is impressed with a new biography of the great barrister Marshall Hall. This life of ‘The Great Defender’ and Conservative MP Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC (1858-1927) is a fascinating read, beautifully written by another English silk, Sally Smith QC.

Trials: On Death Row in Pakistan by Isabel Buchanan

John Sturrock QC enjoys a Poacher's Pilgrimage to the Western Isles and finds this mystical journey is much more than another travel book. The human ecologist, Alastair McIntosh has already established his credentials as one of Scotland’s greatest living authors. Soil and Soul and Hell and High Wa

Long ago I was introduced to the philosophy of David Hume (1711-76) by the late Neil MacCormick lecturing in the Jurisprudence class at Edinburgh University. It was the best of ways to meet another great mind. In the scheme of the course Hume was presented as the harbinger of the end of Natural Law

In Set Adrift Upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances James Hunter masterly weaves together a fascinating account of the Sutherland Clearances. One that takes you from the Strath of Kildonan and other parts of Sutherland to battles in New Orleans via South Africa and onto the foundation of what is

It may surprise some readers that the last Communard of this title is not Jimmy Somerville, the shrill voice of the 1980s, but Adrien Lejeune who as a young free-thinker reluctantly took the side of the Commune revolutionaries when the people of Paris rose up against the reactionary French governmen

The gavel, a device never used in the English courts, features on the cover of Confessions of a Barrister – and is a harbinger of things to come.

Blair's broken vows Tom Bower is a barrister turned investigative journalist, a species that is all but extinct in modern Britain. He has produced a string of debunking biographies of the rich and famous and has successfully defended libel actions from the likes of Richard Branson, Robert Maxwell an

Artists as historians What Paintings Say is a wonderful study of 100 masterpieces, lavishly illustrated and packed with history presented in an accessible and readable way.

Gillian Mawdsley is impressed by Cal Flynn's first novel – inspired by the discovery that one her ancestors was Angus MacMilan, the leader of the notorious Highland Brigade that massacred aborigines in 19th century Australia while Connor Beaton delves into the darker side of the Internet to explor

Danielle Keats Citron's Hate Crimes in Cyberspace makes for uncomfortable but important reading for lawyers in the 21st century. With an excellent understanding of how the Internet functions and how people engage with it, Citron is placed well to dissect increasingly common (and continuously under-r