The Tyrannicide Brief The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold

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, they chose the radical lawyer John Cooke, whose Puritan conscience, political vision, and love of civil liberties gave him the courage to bring the king to trial. As a result, Charles I was beheaded, but eleven years later Cooke himself was arrested, tried, and executed at the hands of Charles II. Geoffrey Robertson, a renowned human rights lawyer, provides a vivid new reading of the tumultuous Civil War years, exposing long-hidden truths: that the king was guilty, 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. Cooke's 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.The Tyrannicide Briefis a superb work of history that casts a revelatory light on some of the most important issues of our time.

Geoffrey 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.


From the Hardcover edition.