Penguin Books Australia

Geoffrey Robertson QC has had a distinguished career as a trial counsel and human rights advocate. He has handled hundreds of death sentence appeals; prosecuted Hastings Banda and defended Salman Rushdie; acted for terrorist suspects at the Old Bailey and for Human Rights Watch in the proceedings against General Pinochet. He was counsel to the Antiguan Royal Commission which exposed arms traffic to the Medellin drugs cartel and was involved in training the judges to try Saddam Hussein. He serves as an appeal judge for the UN war crimes court in Sierra Leone and has authored landmark decisions on the limits of amnesties, the illegality of recruiting child soldiers and other critical issues in the development of international criminal law.

Geoffrey Robertson is founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers and sits as a recorder (part-time judge) in London, where he is a Master of the Middle Temple and visiting professor in human rights law at Queen Mary College. His books include Freedom, the Individual and the Law; Does Dracula Have AIDS?; Media Law; and an acclaimed memoir, The Justice Game. In 2005 he published The Tyrannicide Brief - the story of how Cromwell's lawyers mounted the first trial of a head of state. He has made many television and radio programmes, notably Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals, and has won a Freedom of Information award for his writing and broadcasting. He lives in London with his wife, the author Kathy Lette, and their two children.