Editorial Review:

Product Description:
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.

I confess: I like the way Geoffrey Robertson thinks and the way he writes even if I don't always agree with his conclusions. This book is a great read.

If you can suspend your knowledge of the history (and any associated bias) and look at the events through the perspective of the law, then this is a wonderful fresh look at the legal issues uncovered/exposed by these events.

This book is not just about the events of 17th century England. The issues discussed reverberate today in the trials of modern war criminals and leaders.

Highly recommended to all who have an interest in history, the law and contemporary international events.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Note: I first published this review in April 2006 for the hardcover version of the book.

Average Rating:

Rating: - John Cook[e]: a brave man of principle
I confess: I like the way Geoffrey Robertson thinks and the way he writes even if I don't always agree with his conclusions. This book is a great read.

If you can suspend your knowledge of the history (and any associated bias) and look at the events through the perspective of the law, then this is a wonderful fresh look at the legal issues uncovered/exposed by these events.

This book is not just about the events of 17th century England. The issues discussed reverberate today in the trials of modern war criminals and leaders.

Highly recommended to all who have an interest in history, the law and contemporary international events.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Note: I first published this review in April 2006 for the hardcover version of the book.

Rating: - Great read, even for folks unused to this period
Every once in a while I will pick up a book that is very far from my field, just because it looks interesting and because I want to try something that is well-written in unfamiliar territory. This book surely fits the bill. The prose is very good, and the story of how Charles went from the throne to the chopping block is told in a dramatic way. I totally recommend it.

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Rating: - An Evil Book
Over the last few years I have become aware of the phrase "History Wars" which seems to be a serious attempt by the Politically Correct brigade to reinterpret, and in some cases completely rewrite, history.

One of the most shameful rewritings of history I have ever seen (up there with the holocaust deniers)is Mr. Geoffrey Robertson's book "The Tyrannicide Brief" the basic argument of which is to say that the illegal trial and execution of King Charles I was the first time the people put on trial a tyrant and then set about establishing a utopian new society under Oliver Cromwell.

When I first heard Mr. Robertson put forward his views in an interview on ABC Radio National I was shocked "could this educated man be serious, Cromwell was good man and did the right thing by the people and God?!" As any encyclopaedia will inform you, Cromwell could not get his way with Parliament to put the King on trial so he excluded the House of Lords from the vote and when he was no more successful with the House of Commons he arranged for Colonel Pride prevent around 150 members of the house from entering so that he then had the numbers to win the vote!

Robertson's attempts to make John Cooke into a hero is as absurd as it is wicked. Not only was His Majesty the King denied the fundamental right of the presumption of innocence, he was told in the "trial" that he was to be convicted. The King was placed before a hand-picked biased tribunal. The law had never received Royal Assent.

Add to this the fact that none of the existing high court judges agreed to preside over the court and you get the basic idea. I will not go in to too much detail as readers can seek out the finer details in any good book on the subject. Cromwell simply wanted the King dead at any cost.

The other thing Cromwell is remembered for is his hatred of Roman Catholics and the killing of many thousands of innocent people in Ireland.

So why does Mr. Robertson rewrite history? The answer might be one of the views he often puts forward in interviews and in his writings, that is that he believes the UK, Australia and other realms of the Queen should become republics. So instead of articulating a republic model he engages in twisting the truth to hoodwink the ignorant.

His Majesty King Charles I was the last person to be made a Saint by the Anglican Church due to the fact that Cromwell offered him his life if he would abandon episcopacy but he refused, for this would have taken the Church of England away from being part of 'the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church' and made Her into a sect.

I would urge readers to look to properly researched books on this subject that can be bought through Amazon.

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Rating: - Excellent history of a little known lawyer....
John Cooke of 17th Century England, now that is a name most unknown to massive majority of Americans today and few who do, probably known him as "John Cook" and he wasn't well regarded by previous authors like Antonia Fraser, Charles Charlton or C.V. Wedgwood. But Geoffrey Robertson does great justice to him and this book is a biographical work on John Cooke (with the "e") and his greatest legal work, conviction of King Charles I of high treason against the people of his kingdoms. Of course, that conviction later cost Cooke his life when royal restoration came.

The author traces Cooke's life and interwoven it with the dramatic events of his lifetime, his services with Thomas Wentworth, the English Civil Wars, Cromwell's rule and finally at the end, restoration of Charles II. But the author took care stayed within the boundary of his subject. The author also made sure that Cooke wasn't just a "hack lawyer" as many of the previous historians made him out to be but someone who is ahead of his time in terms of legal reforms. Cooke appears to be a type of lawyer who took his profession very seriously. According to the author, he was the first to advocate the right to remain silence, to pro bono lawyers to help those who cannot afford one and to regard kingship in terms of office granted by the people instead of one anointed by God. Many of what Cooke initially advocated soon became part of our nation's Constitutional laws and legal system we enjoyed today.

The book reads very well and it well written. Obviously the author have done his homework and it clears up many of the misconceptions and little disregards that previous historians have given toward John Cooke, including the proper spelling of his name. Core of the book is the trial of King Charles I and its an excellent narrative far above the only other book that I read on the subject, authored by C.V. Wedgwood. He was a die-hard Puritan but made his reputation as fair-minded and very knowledgeable. He wasn't very famous nor rich or well connected, ironically nobody really know what he even looked like after his death since no one thought Cooke was worthy enough to paint his likeness. This book provides a lot of useful and new information to anyone interested in British history.

The book highly recommended for anyone interested along this subject area. However, I strongly recommended that you should have a good background on the time period before reading it since the subject of the book is rather specific in nature and having a good background knowledge of the reign of Charles I, the civil wars and all that really helped enhance your understanding of the book.

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Rating: - Brilliant History!
For a long time, I have been world weary of contemporary historians who time and again sell the truth of a period for a mess of pottage. The Tyrannicide Brief was written by lawyer and judge, Geoffrey Robertson, who has researched a brilliant history of the time of the Commonwealth in England, which has been horribly treated for the last 347 years.

His main focus is on the lawyer, John Cooke, who accepted his Parliamentarian assignment to try King Charles I, who indeed started the English Civil War and conspired with foreign interests.

Robertson gives a well researched history of the conflict that lead up to the king's trial (Robertson concurs that he was guilty) and the life of Cooke.

He also treats the many histories that have mostly provoked against the Parliamentarians who stood up to the task. He also clears up some historical errors, like the fact that the Parliamentarian Army did not wholesale murder Irish citizens, but took Drogheda against English officers according to the rules of war; and that Irish subjects were treated with the best English judgement under the Commonwealth judge Cooke, who also did not imprison debtors, but instead ordered them to pay the debt by installments, a form of legal sentencing of the poor that would take centuries to recapture, following the malicious court of the conspiring villain king and son of Charles I, Charles II, who tried to subvert his country at the secret Treaty of Dover to Louis XIV of France.

It is atrocious to see how conscientious men had and have suffered in history at the hands of antagonists. This is an important study concerning the Good Old Cause.

While I like the thoughtfulness of Robertson's application of this study of jurisprudence against tyranny, I think it is difficult to apply the traditions and common law of a sovereign state in an international context (i.e. part of the problem of enforcing democracy in Muslim nations) as he does at the end of the book. Nevertheless, his legal thoughts on the state of modern tyranny need to be considered in an increasingly complex world of law and culture. From an American perspective, I think one should also consider the thoughts of John and John Quincy Adams on the difficulties of that subject.

Robertson is rigorous in his historical analysis which is quite rare today. Perhaps historians should study law to write history.

If you want to add an authoritative text to your library, choose this one.

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