Reviews

From the Second World War the dynamics of the vast overseas empire of the United Kingdom began to change, although certain former colonies had gained significant powers before then. The end of the empire, in the sense of complete political and legal independence, came about very quickly in the late

Dorothy Parker was celebrated in her time as a poet, a critic and a writer. Above all, she is cherished today for her acerbic wit. But she is less well-known for her Hollywood screenwriting career which spanned three tumultuous decades. Parker detested Hollywood from the very start – despising

Autocracy, Inc is a small book, with a dark paper cover, that sets out in disturbing detail the attacks, overt and covert, by autocrats everywhere on liberal democracies and open societies. The concept of autocracy is where one person governs with all the power, and that is defined by the author as

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

A new book aiming to restore India's place in the ancient world is a treasure trove of insight and anecdote, writes Kapil Summan. On 1 September 1783, the 24-gun man o' war HMS Crocodile arrived in Madras. A Porcupine-class warship late of the British defeat in America, its most precious asset was t

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

With Donald Trump taking legal advice on how to retain a US base on the Chagos Islands, Tom Marshall reviews a new book by Philippe Sands KC which reveals Britain’s duplicity in its dealings with the islanders of its last colony. The Chagos Archipelago, a small group of islands in the Indian O

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

A monumental new history of Irish republicanism in Dundee reveals much of the Irish diaspora experience in Scotland and leaves Graham Ogilvy impressed by its thorough research. As a young boy I walked through the derelict tenements of Tipperary every day to get to school and in the evening, after sc