Harry Potter's background as chaplain of HMP Wormwood Scrubs and as a criminal defence barrister perfectly places him to draw together the duality present in English capital punishment as a legal fact and the Anglican church and its support for it in an evangelical campaign over hundreds of years . Anyone interested in the history of judicial execution in England and the legal efforts to both maintain and abolish it will find this a fascinating and occasionally terrifying survey. Well written with excellent research and choice of source material, we are shown the liberal but mixed attitudes to abolition from Dickens and Thackeray to the mainstream of the church's opinion and the ongoing necessity of hanging as the expression of God's punitive imperative. Casual readers as well as students will be gripped by this book and the facts behind hanging, especially if read alongside the secular American acadamic, Franklin E. Zimring. In the latter's excellent "The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment", 2003, the Berkley law professor survey's the American experience of execution. Interestingly,the elements of established church and religious fervour in the maintenance of the English model are absent in the pioneer American sphere. The abolition of capital punishment in Michigan in 1846, is a telling fact, when public hangings in England were drawing crowds of thousands of drunken citizens viewing execution as entertainment rather than as salutary message. Potter holds our attention from start to finish telling us much about our society and perhaps tempting or challenging us to consider our real natures.Read full review
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