Clive Stafford Smith

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Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America

Injustice

The Far Side of the Moon

Penguin Shop: 3 Clothbound Classics for £33

[A] vivid, inquiring memoir... In unpicking this history within himself, in what is a properly soul-searching book, Stafford Smith finds useful ways to ask the hardest of questions about crime and punishment

Trials of My Father

From the renowned human rights lawyer and activist Clive Stafford Smith, The Far Side of the Moon is a deeply personal book about men and mental health, told through Clive's challenging relationship with his late father, and his experiences representing an acute depressive on Death Row.

A taboo-breaking book about the stigma and painful legacy of mental illness from one of our most prominent human rights lawyers, founder of Reprieve and a tireless advocate against the death penalty

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
As one of our leading campaigners for justice, human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has spent a lifetime getting to know his clients - from detainees in Guantánamo Bay to prisoners facing execution on Death Row - and finding out, in his own words, 'what makes them tick'. 
 
But for much of his life, closer to home, there was a man whose mind remained off limits: his own father. It was only years after Dick's death, when Clive inherited more than 3,000 of his letters, that he could finally take a breath and start to piece together the obsessive personality behind them. 
 
In The Far Side of the Moon, Stafford Smith seeks the broad conversation about mental illness that was not accessible in his earlier years, reflecting on his father's fragmented life together with that of Larry Lonchar, a client who also struggled with severe depression, and whose fate continues to preoccupy him. 
 
Following the critically acclaimed Injustice, this courageous new book is an indictment of the failures in our social and justice systems, a meditation on privilege and its consequences, and an intimate exploration of how the mind's hinterlands can impact a family and shape a life. 
 
© Clive Stafford Smith 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Clive Stafford Smith (Author, Reader) Clive Stafford Smith is a lawyer specialising in defending those accused of the most serious crimes, and is founder and Director of UK non-profit the Justice League, and formerly founded and worked at Reprieve. Based in the US for twenty-six years, he now works from the UK where he continues to defend prisoners on Death Row, and challenges the continued incarceration of those held in secret prisons around the world. He has secured the release of 85 prisoners from Guantánamo Bay and still acts for several more. His book Bad Men (shortlisted for the 2008 Orwell Prize) described this campaign. Alongside many other awards, in 2000 he received an OBE for 'humanitarian services'. His second book Injustice was shortlisted for the 2013 Orwell Prize and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger.

The Far Side of the Moon

Trials of My Father

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