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Original Essays | April 30, 2013
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This title in other editionsThe Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffoldby Geoffrey Robertson
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Charles I waged civil wars that cost one in ten Englishmen their lives. But in 1649 Parliament was hard put to find a lawyer with the skill and daring to prosecute a King who claimed to be above the law: in the end the man they briefed was the radical lawyer John Cooke. His Puritan conscience, political vision, and love of civil liberties gave him the courage to bring the King's trial to its dramatic conclusion: the English Republic. He would pay dearly for it: Charles I was beheaded, but eleven years later Cooke himself was arrested, tried, and brutally executed at the hands of Charles II.
Geoffrey Robertson, an internationally renowned human rights lawyer, provides a vivid new reading of the tumultuous Civil War years, exposing long-hidden truths: that the King was guilty as charged, that his execution was necessary to establish the sovereignty of Parliament, that the regicide trials were rigged and their victims should be seen as national heroes. John Cooke sacrificed his own life to make tyranny a crime. His trial of Charles I, the first trial of a head of state for waging war on his own people, became a forerunner of the trials of Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milosevic, and Saddam Hussein. This is a superb work of history that casts a revelatory light on some of the most important issues of our time. Review:"Not only has he written the first biography of John Cooke, one of the pivotal figures of the mid-seventeenth century, but he has illuminated the legal process by which a powerful monarch was held to account by the law of the land." Sunday Herald
Review:"In telling his story, Geoffrey Robertson has redeemed from obscurity an unsung hero of true greatness, a selfless champion of the poor and a law reformer of rare distinction. More important, he has shed invigorating light on the course of the English Civil War." The Spectator
Review:"[A] work of great compassion and, at a time when it seems to be fashionable for politicians to denigrate lawyers, an essential read for anyone who believes in the fearless independence of the law." The Times
Review:"[Robertson's] forensic intelligence can penetrate where professional historians have not yet reached." Literary Review
Review:"A work of literary advocacy as elegant, impassioned and original as any the author can ever have laid before a court." The Observer
Book News Annotation:John Cooke (1608-1660) served as lead prosecutor for the trial of English monarch Charles I during the English Civil War, only to be executed himself a decade later on the orders of Charles II. According to Robertson (an Australian human rights lawyer) he was to suffer even further indignities at the hands of historians who would label him a "regicide" carrying out Oliver Cromwell's dirty work and ignore his genuine commitment to progressive causes, including a national health service and legal aid for the poor. In this examination of Cooke's involvement in the trial of Charles I, Robertson defends the idea that he was a "tyrannicide in the noble Roman sense, rather than a king-killer."
Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Book News Annotation:John Cooke (1608-1660) served as lead prosecutor for the trial of English monarch Charles I during the English Civil War, only to be executed himself a decade later on the orders of Charles II. According to Robertson (an Australian human rights lawyer) he was to suffer even further indignities at the hands of historians who would label him a "regicide" carrying out Oliver Cromwell's dirty work and ignore his genuine commitment to progressive causes, including a national health service and legal aid for the poor. In this examination of Cooke's involvement in the trial of Charles I, Robertson defends the idea that he was a "tyrannicide in the noble Roman sense, rather than a king-killer." Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Synopsis:In 1649, no lawyer in the country would accept the brief of prosecuting Charles I, except one — John Cook, the bravest of barristers, who was killed as punishment for sending the King to the scaffold.
About the AuthorGeoffrey Robertson is a leading human rights lawyer and a UN war-crimes judge who has won landmark rulings on civil liberties from the highest courts in Britain, Europe, and the British Commonwealth. He was involved in the cases against General Pinochet and Hastings Banda and in the training of judges for the trial of Saddam Hussein. Robertson is the author of Crimes Against Humanity, which has been an inspiration for the global justice movement. Born in Australia, he now lives in London.
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Other books you might likeRelated SubjectsHistory and Social Science » Europe » Great Britain » Tudor to Stuart Period
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