He skewers judicial pomposity and class/racial prejudice throughout the book, bursting the balloon of inflated reputations (not least Edward Marshall-Hall and George Carman), while acknowledging the fine art of advocacy and the tremendous strain under which legal teams operate. Grant clearly holds the British legal system in high regard, but this does not blind him to the hypocrisy, incompetence and sheer eccentricity of many of its practitioners. While COURT NUMBER ONE details all the gruesome forensic evidence a true crime reader might crave, it also lives up to its title in providing a compelling account of how the conduct of trials at the Old Bailey has helped 'define modern Britain'. I thoroughly enjoyed Thomas Grant's previous book (The Case Histories of Jeremy Hutchinson) but this is even better. Telling the stories of 12 of the most scandalous and celebrated cases across a radically shifting century, this audiobook traces the evolving attitudes of Britain, the decline of a society built on deference and discretion, the tensions brought by a more permissive society and the rise of trial by mass media.įrom the Sunday Times best-selling author of Jeremy Hutchinson's Case Histories, Court Number One is a mesmerising window onto the thrills, fears and foibles of the modern age. Not only notorious for its murder trials, Court Number One recorded the changing face of modern British society, bearing witness to alternate attitudes to homosexuality, the death penalty, freedom of expression, insanity and the psychology of violence. It was here that the likes of Madame Fahmy, Lord Haw Haw, John Christie, Ruth Ellis, George Blake (and his unlikely jailbreakers, Michael Randle and Pat Pottle), Jeremy Thorpe and Ian Huntley were defined in history, alongside a wide assortment of other traitors, lovers, politicians, psychopaths, spies, con men and - of course - the innocent.

In the decades that followed it witnessed the trials of the most famous and infamous defendants of the 20th century. The principal criminal court of England, historically reserved for the more serious and high-profile trials, Court Number One opened its doors in 1907 after the building of the 'new' Old Bailey. Court Number One of the Old Bailey is the most famous court room in the world and the venue of some of the most sensational human dramas ever to be played out in a criminal trial.

Court Number One by Thomas Grant