A comprehensive exploration of how the laws around murder developed

This is a book about the development of laws, custom and practice when judging ‘murder’ over the past thousand years or so. It starts with the concept of wergild - whereby the crime of murder could be expiated by the payment to his (sic) relatives of the value of his life and goes all the way up to present day issues around corporate manslaughter and deaths caused by dangerous driving. Astonishingly definitions of murder have changed little since Elizabethan times and the formulation of laws by Sir Edward Coke. Naturally I did have to go to Google to check that Edward Coke shared his title with a Wetherspoons in Keswick! (It does) . It covers definitions around diminished responsibility and provocation and the changes in legislation prompted by famous murder trials such as that of Ruth Ellis and Derek Bentley. It is still possible to be saddened and infuriated by the fact that it is easier to prosecute the owner of a small business for corporate negligence that it is a major international company and that no-one has ever been convicted for their actions during the Hillsborough tragedy. Signs are that it will be many years before anyone is prosecuted for Grenville. This is well written and absorbing for the layperson as well as for those with a more professional interest.