Ian Cobain. A Secret History of Torture (Counterpoint, 2012)."Guardian investigator Ian Cobain begins his story with the Second World War, but could easily have gone much further back. A horribly repetitive picture would emerge: of British governments and their agents using systematic brutality against ever-changing categories of opponent, bending and twisting the law, and then lying about it all. His expose prompts a third historical reminder: that if British self-images and stereotypes of national character revolve around ideas of decency and fairness, a strikingly persistent feature of others' images of Britishness has been the charge of endemic hypocrisy."
—Stephen Howe, The Independent
