Reviews

Eighty years have elapsed since the heady days of August 1944 when Paris, the City of Light – and to many, a beacon of light in the pre-war days – liberated itself from the ignominy, shame and cruelty of Nazi tyranny.

Graham Ogilvy reviews a newly-released book which reveals the history of the headquarters of the world revolution. This ground-breaking new book by Irish historian Maurice Casey tells the story of Wexford woman May O’Callaghan and of the friendships and love affairs of her comrades who lived a

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,

‘Necrogamy’ might sound deeply unpleasant, but in fact refers to a lawful practice in France — one of the only jurisdictions in the world to allow, in certain circumstances, posthumous marriage between a living person and their deceased partner. And Mrs, a bittersweet dark comedy

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

All eyes are on Paris and the publishers are cashing in on the Olympics with a raft of new books focussing on ‘The City of Light’.

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

If you are in Edinburgh during the Festival be sure to visit the National Gallery’s new Lavery on Location exhibition – a well-curated tour de force of the works of Sir John Lavery, the Irish Impressionist who carved out a distinguished career for himself and became one of Britain’

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

The trial in question, of Bruno Dey, opened in Hamburg on 17 October 2019. Dey was charged with his role within the Holocaust. It was alleged that he was involved as an accessory (compared to a perpetrator which is the distinction on which the book focuses) in the murder of 5,230 inmates at Stutthof

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