Robert Shiels

Robert Shiels reviews the autobiography of distinguished KC Michael Beloff. Michael Beloff KC has had a very varied career as a barrister in practice, arbitrator, and judge. His career followed an education as scholar at the Dragon School in Oxford, then Eton (a King’s Scholar and Captain of t

This small book, with a big title, is commendable in several ways: it shows quite how many courts or tribunals and different types of case a member of the Bar, in the author’s generation at least, might have had to deal with. The nature and extent of the pressing political and legal issues tha

Public execution of a person on judicial warrant after a capital charge had been proved against them at trial was always a deeply moving event. It was notably in the earlier periods of time a remarkably violent episode.

The prisoner’s tale started in 2008 when Stephen Jackley, at some point a university student, was arrested in the United States, after being caught in Vermont using fake identification to buy a firearm. Regrettably, the reader is not favoured with much explanation of that activity. After a yea

Writing about, or even contemplating, the whole life of someone is a daunting task, particularly if that person had been as busy as Lord Denning. Born into a family of modest means in a small Hampshire town in 1899, he went on to gain two firsts from Oxford and served in the army in the First World

Previous generations of law students were advised to read the autobiographies of retired judges and that was certainly the case with that of Lord Wheatley One Man’s Judgement: an autobiography (1987). There was thought generally then to be much to be learnt about the central workings of the le

The Company of Scotland and its attempts to establish the colony of Caledonia on the inhospitable Isthmus of Panama, in South America, in the late seventeenth century is remembered even now as a human and financial disaster in Scottish history. The grand plan of William Paterson, whose earlier plan

The concept of command, as a way to decide on strategies to achieve objectives, or as an assertion of authority, has been essential to military action and leadership. Sir Lawrence Freedman pursues that proposition and shows how it is also deeply political.

The initial thought on seeing this book for the first time might be for many readers to wonder why there should be another on the same person and the religious and political topics of late-Renaissance Scotland. The author herself suggests the point in her list of further reading with the comment tha

From 1678, a handful of perjurers claimed that the Catholics of England planned to assassinate the king. As a result of their disgraceful work between November 1678 and July 1681, at least 17 Catholics, lay and clergy, died as traitors on the scaffold, and not in the easiest of circumstances. Many o

There is an aphorism to the effect that history is past politics, and politics is present history. In this study, journalist Phil Tinline considers some of the events, over the first century of mass democracy, when politics lurched from crisis to crisis. The aim is see how this history of political

The brutal deaths of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Permanent Under-Secretary for Ireland respectively, took place on Saturday 6 May, 1882 in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Both were strolling together after a busy time following their recent appointments. The murders were car

The criminal trial of Marshal Philippe Pétain in Paris in 1945 was that of the highest ranking military officer accused of treason, in having betrayed his country by collaboration with the enemy. The contrast in personal fortunes was extreme: Pétain had, as supreme commander of French

There is no shortage of books about some politicians but Winston Churchill seems to be in a separate category from the others. When Churchill: Walking With Destiny (Allen Lane, 2018) by Andrew Roberts (now Lord Roberts of Belgravia) was published that biography, at 1,105 pages, was said to be the 1,

A psychonaut, according to a dictionary, is someone who explores altered states of consciousness, especially through hallucinatory drugs. The term apparently originates from 1970 when one author described the psychedelic, drug-induced experiences with his friend. Mike Jay is a historian of