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The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868 by Robert Hughes |
Honest, deeply felt, scholarly and eminently readable, this is a truly terrible revelation of the almost medieval and inhuman judiciary situation in late Georgian and Victorian England and the shameless way in which the government chose to free England of her criminals. Transportation was the answer for the slightest infringement or the worst crime. Transcending the purely historical, this indictment of what ravages personal power can effect on a dependent society is chilling in its objectivity and fairness.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 70 Autumn 2013 ) |
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