Friday 19 August 2011

Anatomy of Justice at St Hilda's Crime & Mystery Weekend

The 18th Annual Mystery and Crime Weekend is due to start this evening from 6:45pm at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. St Hilda’s is not like Crimefest or Harrogate. It is a lot more academic. Each year it has a theme and those giving a talk must use the theme as the background for their paper.

Those giving a talk this year on Saturday are-

Francis Fyfield who will be talking about Peculiar Trials and Cath Staincliffe whose talk is entitled When mercy is murder: a look at the law and assisted dying. Jane Finnis and Ann Granger will be talking about Justice in the Roman Empire and Newgate Prison: A symbol of its times? Respectively.

Andrew Taylor will be talking about Wilkie Collins and Little Women. Whilst Martin Edwards talk is entitled The British Lawyer-Author.

I shall be sharing the very first talk on Saturday morning alongside the ever-delightful Val McDermid. Val will be giving a talk on Making the Law work for you: an author’s guide whilst my paper is called Life along the Judicial Corridor.

On Sunday talks will be given by Penny Evans who will be talking about Why it’s better to kill your husband when he’s awake and Keith Miles on Rumpole of the Bailey.

There will also be two conference dinner speeches. The first will be given by Triona Adams who will be remembering Sarah Caudwell and the second will be given by Natasha Cooper (who is also chairing the conference) who will be recalling Trish Maguire.

The Conference Guest of Honour this year is Professor Bernard Knight who will be giving the conference lecture on The Coroner: Medieval Relic or Useful Institution?

St Hilda’s is a really unique conference. It has been going on for 18 years now and there are a lot of die hard fans that regularly attend. Everybody stays on the college grounds. I shall be hopefully blogging about the weekend whilst I am there.

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