Robert Shiels

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

On 18 September 1961, a plane transporting Dag Hammarskjöld, then the secretary-general of the United Nations, flew across the Congo on a long route to avoid a vast area that had seceded from the main part of the country. The fatal flight ended at Ndola in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasala

How do you present a biography of a person in a different age who travelled the world and attained great fame? Any such subject would test even an experienced writer and Sir Roger Casement more so. All due deference ought to be shown to this study of the life of Roger Casement, not least because, on

In cinematic style, this study launches with a prologue describing a major speech of Lloyd George shortly after the outbreak of the Great War. That great event seems to have epitomised the expedient rallying call by the master of the genre in an unexpected war, or at least a war at an unexpected poi

A simple question: do leaders make history, or does history make leaders? Seeking an answer formed the basis of a course by the author on leaders and leadership in history at Harvard University. The debate in understanding leadership is said to be deciding between those (like Machiavelli) who believ

The Cleveland Torso Murderer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, was an unidentified serial killer who was active in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1930s. In parenthesis, it should be acknowledged immediately that these sorts of designations assume that there is one responsible person but that

It is rather sad that the manuscript for this book was completed by its author, Maurice Watkins, a solicitor to and director of Manchester United, shortly before his death in 2021. His relatives and others have assisted with the work to ensure publication. Commendably, profits from the book go towar

Approaching the subject of the personal relations between the monarch and the prime ministers must surely have been somewhat daunting given the longevity of the reign of Queen Victoria. Many of the individual prime ministers are themselves the subject of an extensive literature by specialist histori

Another ‘trial of the century’ book! This one is a narrative account of events leading up to the 1877 prosecution of a feminist free-thinker, Annie Besant, together with her friend, the activist and liberal politician Charles Bradlaugh. They had arranged for the publication of Charles Kn

Robert Shiels commends an important new book on the Dreyfus case which exposed the anti-semitism in French society that would eventually find expression in the Vichy regime and the obscenity of French police rounding up Jews to be sent to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps. Maurice Samuels, a

Robert Shiels commends a new look at the self-invented authoritarian Caesars who present such a clear and present danger to democracy and the rule of law today.