Sarah Bradford
Diamond in the Rough
Madam, Where Are Your Mangoes? An Episodic Memoir
By Desmond de Silva
Quartet Books 304pp £25 order from our bookshop
Anyone who thinks lawyers are boring should read this book. Desmond de Silva has outfought, outwitted, outdined and outdrunk everyone, from warlords, criminal dictators, Hollywood stars and top footballers to major political figures and serial murderers. It reads like a real-life thriller.
In his foreword Julian Fellowes, who has known de Silva for thirty years, recounts how his friend, as the first British QC to be appointed chief prosecutor at a case before an international war crimes tribunal, succeeded in bringing to justice Charles Taylor, the notoriously corrupt president of
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Walk down your supermarket pet food aisle and you’ll be hard pressed to find a single brand that claims to be made with high-welfare meat. More expensive pet food should not be about spoiling our cats but about sparing the farmed beasts we feed them.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/meattoo
'Two things prevent [this book] from collapsing under the weight of its own wayward ambition. Colin Jones, one of the finest living scholars of early modern France, is no ordinary historian. And the day in question, 27 July 1794, was no ordinary day'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/night-of-the-guillotine
The Anatomy of Melancholy 'has never quite become a widely recognised, bona fide "classic". For long stretches, the bulk of its readership has been restricted to bibliophiles and scholars. It has had an air of murkiness and desuetude'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/phantoms-of-the-mind