Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey - The instant Sunday Times bestseller

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Tom Crewe, Maddie Mortimer, Aidan Cottrell-Boyce and Santanu Bhattacharya Chaired by Matthew Stadlen New Writers of Fiction Trinity College: Garden Room Levine Building 4:00pm Fri 31 Friday, 31 March 2023 See this event The intention behind this book is a very serious one: to explain the workings of the law in murder cases, and ultimately to seek the failings in society that lie behind murders. I met Her Honour Wendy Joseph at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Fiction Festival in Harrogate last year. I have never knowingly met a Judge before. I've always had that stereotypical view that a judge will be large, and loud and usually male. Her Honour is tiny and soft spoken and gentle and I was a little bit smitten by her! Right now, with our courts straining under the weight of the many heinous crimes being committed, it's not merely the system that is flawed. The fracture lines that run through our society are becoming harder and harder to ignore and, from a unique vantage point, the author warns that we do so at our peril.

Unlawful Killings - Penguin Books UK Unlawful Killings - Penguin Books UK

Every unlawful death tells a story. Every trial involves characters to be understood, motives to be unravelled, plans and methodology to be exposed.” So writes Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC at the beginning of her riveting and revelatory début, Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey (Doubleday) . The Weekly Round-up: Rwanda hearing, planning law reforms, mercy killing reforms for prosecution decisions Reading case law can be tedious at times however the book is written in an engaging manner and it is easy to digest and ponder on.A gripping, disturbing and deeply humane exploration of the darkest side of the human condition, from a judge who has seen it all. I devoured Unlawful Killings in a single sitting. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The Secret Barrister Having recently sat as a Juror, I can state, first hand, that it is nothing like you see on the TV. Countless hours of waiting around to be called, a slow, almost pedestrian look through the evidence (in this case not murder but still very nasty), and with none of the high energy 'gotcha' reveals that you may have been used to seeing on old episodes of Perry Mason. The author very clearly dispels this myth in her narrative, but also takes us behind the scenes of the things we might not witness as jurors. All those moments of lawyerly wrangling that cannot be shared with the jury for fear of prejudicing the outcome. Using a very down to earth, often humorous, tone that always carries that edge and gravitas you might expect from a Judge, Her Honour Wendy Joseph delivers candid and very astute observations of the entire process, dissecting not only the salient parts of the case, but the legal teams, the witnesses, the defendants and even the jury, really making you feel like you are there in the public gallery watching proceedings. Joshua Rozenberg QC is the only full-time journalist to have been appointed Queen’s Counsel honoris causa. After taking a law degree at Oxford he trained as a solicitor. He is an honorary Master of the Bench of Gray’s Inn and a non-executive board member of the Law Commission. Joshua was the BBC’s legal correspondent for 15 years before moving to newspapers. He now presents the popular Radio 4 series Law in Action, which he launched in 1984 and appears regularly on other news networks in the UK and abroad. His forthcoming book Enemies of the People? How Judges Shape Society will be published by Bristol University Press in April 2020. The Jewish Chronicle

Murder at the Old Bailey - JBW Murder at the Old Bailey - JBW

UNLAWFUL KILLINGS reads like a really terrific novel. It is riveting, thought-provoking, and very, very entertaining. I loved it.' -- Roddy Doyle Wendy Joseph, the judge and author, sets this out in a suitably sober fashion, but unfortunately at least one of the narrators undermines this aim by the frankly ridiculous voices and presentations that she gives to some of the protagonists. Many of the barristers are acted in a way that amounts to the burlesque, and the most egregious example of all is that of an expert witness: the 'eastern European' psychiatrist, who is a virtual caricature. And a flawed one at that: her accent is described as being in every way a Germanic one ('w's for 'v's, 'z's for 'th's), but the narrator portrays her with an unmistakably Russian accent (and in the process renders her statements almost incomprehensible). I was sorry when this one ended, and could easily have read another six trials and not been bored in the slightest.The breadth of cases examined, from domestic violence, to gang warfare to honour killings are all given the context they deserve rather than going for the headlines. I genuinely found them all fascinating as well as gaining an insight to what actually happens during a jury trial. Focusing on six dramatic murder and manslaughter cases she details the inner workings of British law, removing the distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’. She will be in conversation with leading legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg, host of Radio 4’s Law in Action and author of Enemies of the People?