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

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Aside from its storytelling in the capacity of true crime, Her Honour also draws out a real and disturbing pattern — that in most cases before the court, our societal institutions have been the breeding ground for the very crimes we reprehend. 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. As we are taken through 6 different semi-fictionalised trials involving members from every section of society, Her Honour Wendy Joseph gives us access into a Judge’s perspective and uncovers the fundamentally human face under the cold steely mask of the law.

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

The book is structured in a very accessible way, even to people with absolutely no experience of criminal law or legal procedure in any form. She has constructed a series of fictional cases, built from her experiences of hearing hundreds of real cases, to demonstrate different aspects of the crimes of murder and manslaughter, what the law is, how it is applied and how verdicts and sentences are reached. The author explains in straightforward, easily understood language the facts of each case, what evidence is brought forward in support of the case, the defence presented and how the judge instructs the jury and how sentence is passed. For anyone who is interested in more detail of the law being applied, there are detailed appendices which you can consult for further reading but, if that’s not your bag, you don’t need to go into that much depth to understand the points being made. Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: I love it when people who’ve had long careers write these sort of books showing the variety of people they’ve encountered along the way. A contrast to younger writers who are trying to make it about them and their “platform”.

It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories. Wendy’s career in the law forms a perfect and inspiring arc of achievement; a girl from Cardiff with a love of English Literature (which she read at Cambridge until changing to law in her final year) who, in 2012, became only the third ever full-time female judge at the Old Bailey, after Nina Lowry in the late 80s and 90s, and Anne Goddard QC in the late 90s and early 2000s. She lost her father while still at school and her mum was nervous that the Bar was a poor choice of career, given the imperative of ‘needing to earn a living’. I was sorry when this one ended, and could easily have read another six trials and not been bored in the slightest.

Unlawful Killings by Wendy Joseph | Book review | The TLS

Unfortunately, this did not really land for me. Joseph QC has written a great book here, one which ought to be recommended to all first year Law students, and those considering a career in Law. It does a good job of covering basic principles in the criminal law of murder, but goes no further. In some ways, Joseph QC satisfies the job she set out to establish. It is an effective piece, with a good deal of suspense and provides insight into a judges role. However this is a rather basic, limited insight, with more in the way of entertainment than analysis. Moreover the fictionalised, hodgepodge stories, for me, felt intangible, because the writing made them seem like heightened reality, rather than facts as they might appear in court.

The explanations are naturally made in the main by examining a number of different murder cases which the judge was at pains to explain are an amalgamation of trials she has sat in on, rather than individual cases.

Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the…

Former Old Bailey judge Wendy Joseph explains what it is like to dispense justice in some of the UK’s most high-profile murder cases and warns that fracture lines in our society are becoming harder to ignore. 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. Until her March retirement Her Honour Wendy Joseph was one of the just 16 judges licensed to try murder cases at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales – better known as the Old Bailey – and the only woman. In Unlawful Killings: Life, Love & Murder she shares her rare insight from 15 years of presiding over numerous high-profile cases, having previously served as a criminal barrister for more than three decades.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). Until her retirement in 2022, Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC (now KC) was a judge at the Old Bailey, sitting on criminal cases, trying mainly allegations of murder and other homicide. When she moved to the Old Bailey in 2012 she was the only woman amongst sixteen judges, and only the third woman ever to hold a permanent position there. Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey is her first book.

Former judge regrets not calling out sexual harassment - BBC

I had no idea that a ‘perverse verdict’ was even a thing, and I feel enlightened, reassured and even a little bit empowered to discover it exists, and the contexts - historical as explained and current as in one of the chapters - in which it has been used made me smile and sigh with relief. Sometimes the law is indeed an ass, and yet the power remains with us: Twelve people of this country, randomly drawn from its ranks, to return a verdict which they believe to be right.Absolutely superb. 5 stars for sheer readability alone. Her Honour entertains as she educates us about murder, about the law and about how we human beings are shaped as we create the culture we live with. Philippa Perry, author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read