Reviews

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

As controversy rages over the reinstatement of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art, this timely and thoroughly researched book makes an eloquent plea for the restoration of what was a jewel in Scotland's artistic and cultural crown. The Mack was considered to be the great masterpiece o

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

This book, part of the series “Studies in International & Comparative Criminal Law”, contains 17 essays, by authors, both national and international in honour of Ralph Henham, who for many years was on the staff of Nottingham Trent University and was a professor there from 1998 until

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

Douglas Cusine is impressed by a 'first-class', enlightening and readable account by a child protection lawyer of an under-resourced and neglected area of the law.

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.

Following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, Britain began to face up to the changing world of the 20th century which would bring an end to the greatest empire the world has ever known. Robert Shiels enjoys a readable new account. With this readable general narrative of the Edwardian period, Alwyn

1848, sometimes known as The Springtime of the Peoples, saw revolutionary fervour sweep across Europe and the ominous publication by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels of The Communist Manifesto. Robert Shiels finds a new history of this European turning point by the eminent historian Sir Christopher Cl

Graham Ogilvy reviews a "true story of love, crime and a dangerous obsession". Stendhal syndrome is unlikely to feature in a plea of mitigation in a sheriff court near you – and citing it did nothing to secure the liberty of Stéphane Breitwieser, the working-class Frenchman who systemat

Robert Shiels is impressed by a new history of opium which paints a fascinating picture of an ancient trade with a profound impact on modern society. Opium has its own history and this discursive study by novelist Amitav Ghosh, moving into factual history, concentrates on individual aspects of the o

Robert Shiels uncovers the story of how our everyday truths came to be. This substantial and interesting book has a rather contrived title that suggests a military battle of sorts, although it narrates a crucial aspect of the history of ideas in the British context.

Robert Shiels enjoys a new book on the age-old practice of wine fraud. This modest but interesting study of the murky side of wine-making gives an insight as to the old trade practices and the weakness of the system within which the business has been conducted.