Reviews

Douglas Thomson reviews a new book by Ian O'Donnell, professor of criminology at University College Dublin, examining four very different prison regimes. In this book, Professor Ian O'Donnell visits and investigates four very different prison environments, all considerably unlike those within the ma

Robert Shiels welcomes an important new study on the Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy, the Clydeside merchants who made fortunes from Caribbean misery. The nature and extent of the economic impact of Caribbean slavery in British society is a highly topical and political issue. There is no doubt that many m

Former sheriff Douglas J Cusine is impressed by Gillian Mawdsley's new study of sudden deaths and FAIs in Scotland. For me, there are two very significant sentences in this impressive book: “The public should be able to understand the role of an FAI…” (para. 2.01) and “It is

In the wake of the dropping of proposed legislation in Scotland to pardon those unfortunate women convicted of witchcraft, Robert Shiels reviews the latest book to consider witchcraft trials of the past – and present. There was before the Scottish Parliament from June 2022 a proposal for legis

Ever since the publication of George Dangerfield's classic 'The Strange Death of Liberal England', the demise of the Liberal Party pre-WW1 has fascinated historians. Robert Shiels reviews the latest addition to the literature.

Graham Ogilvy reviews the autobiography of James McIntyre, the Scottish criminal defence lawyer who got too close to his clients and ended up on the wrong side of the law. Firstly, a declaration of interest. I knew and liked James McIntyre at university where he was popular, cheerful, charismatic an

Robert Shiels is sceptical of a proposed link between the Nazis and modern corporate management.

Robert Shiels reviews the latest book on the murders that terrified Glasgow in the sixties. After the early short study by Charles Stoddart, who passed away last week, Bible John: Search for a Sadist (1980), there have been at least four or more books, in the last 20 years, specifically on a we

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