Richard Ingrams – författare

A remarkably perceptive and vivid life of one of England's greatest radicals.The early years of the 19th-century were ones of misery and oppression. The common people were forced into conditions of extreme poverty by enclosures and the Agricultural Revolution, and the long Tory administration of Lord Liverpool saw its task as keeping law and order at all costs. The cause of reform was a dangerous one, as William Cobbett was to find.Cobbett is best known for his ‘Rural Rides’, a classic account of early-19th-century Britain which has never been out of print. But he was a much greater figure than that implies, being the foremost satirist and proponent of reform of the time. He had a taste for provoking the deceit and vanity of the supposedly good and great, and had an abiding hatred of the establishment, or ‘The Thing’, as he christened it. In the pages of his ‘Political Register’ he lambasted corruption and excoriated hypocrisy, and was forever in fear of prosecution for libel, for which he was sent to Newgate prison for two years, which was the cause of his bankruptcy and forced him to flee to America.For all that the establishment loathed and feared him, the people loved him, and he was greeted by adoring crowds wherever he went. He was a hero of his time, and Richard Ingram’s admirable biography is both judicious, moving, sometimes funny and always utterly engaging.

'Stirring' Roger Lewis, Daily Mail, BOOK OF THE WEEK'A warm and worthy tribute' The Times'Elegantly written, thought-provoking' The Lady'A lucid and affectionate portrait of one of the great journalists of his day' ObserverSir Ludovic Kennedy was a British journalist, television personality, humanist and author. Following a brief naval career, Ludo devoted his life to what he referred to as his 'lifelong obsession with miscarriages of justice' and he fought this cause tirelessly, until he died in 2009. He is best known for re-examining cases such as the kidnapping of American toddler Charles Lindbergh, about which he wrote his most ambitious book on injustice, The Airman and the Carpenter. Ludo's writings and work on other cases such as the murder convictions of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley were unique in that they often dispelled the breeding ground for conspiracy theories and regularly heralded dramatic changes of public opinion. Ludo is considered to be hugely influential in the abolition of the death penalty in the UK as well as other legal reforms, most notably the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984) which obligated police to tape-record the questioning of suspects. His life story is one that deserves to be remembered and celebrated.Richard Ingrams first met Ludovic Kennedy in 1963 and the pair quickly bonded over their shared goal of exposing the fallible nature of the British justice system. Ingrams interweaves this biography with detailed analysis of the cases to which Ludo dedicated his life, vividly recapturing the spirit of his friend and colleague.