Washington’s inability to subjugate Iran is an example of how it is trying to preserve a regional order that no longer exists, argues RAMZY BAROUD
Tyranny of the crowd: how the tables were turned on London’s witch-hunting mobs
JOHN CALLOW tells the story of the innovative but little-known judge, Sir John Holt (1642-1710), and his influential judgements on witch trials
US financial instability is exposing the limits of a dollar-dominated global economy — and giving the Global South a historic chance to build an alternative, says MURAD QURESHI
DOUG NICHOLLS says the parasitic finance markets must be challenged or another British government could be toppled
The late country singer’s Imagination Library has put hundreds of millions of books into children’s hands. We should build on that legacy by defending the libraries at the heart of our communities, says BRENDA AITCHISON
Deprivation is a fundamental factor in criminal behaviour that must be addressed but, KENNY MacASKILL argues, there needs to a major rethink in sentencing to tackle overcrowding
MML director MEIRIAN JUMP outlines the recently refreshed library’s busy autumn schedule that ranges from book sales, archival exploration, community work with online education and the ever popular site tours
TONY BURKE surveys the shifting political landscape and the challenges Labour needs to address if it is to prevail in the 2028 federal elections
BY THE 1680s, the law lay bleeding in England. City charters had been withdrawn and rewritten, political trials had broken the opposition to the Stuart crown, and a vast standing army was assembled upon Hounslow Heath in order to keep London down.
A new generation of young and highly ambitious lawyers, schooled in the ultra-royalism of the civil wars, had risen to prominence in the service of the restored monarchy and had offered their skills and rapier-like intelligences in the achievement of spectacular political gains through the control of the legislature and the law courts.
Foremost of these was Judge Jeffreys, who rose to become lord chancellor and whose name still resonates with cruelty in the West Country, whose rebels he hanged or transported as slaves to the Americas and the West Indies.
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ANGUS REID urges us to understand the persecution of Jason Arday from a political and historical perspective, and to see the victim in human terms
JOHN CALLOW introduces the work of Geoffrey Trease, who placed ordinary people at the centre of his historical fiction for children, creating adventurous stories to inspire the possibilities of social change
A remarkable excavation in the Netherlands has raised hopes of locating the grave of Louis XIV’s famed captain of the King’s Musketeers. JOHN CALLOW introduces the real figure behind the hero of Dumas’s novels
Former judge ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the details and controversy of Lucy Letby’s trial and appeal in the context of famous historical wrongful convictions that prove both the justice system and legal activists make errors