Apologia pro vita sua

Any fair-minded person who has looked into the matter knows that Conrad Black was wrongly convicted. Indeed under English law he would not have been prosecuted at all, I believe, and had he been so, the judge would have thrown the case out on the first day on the grounds that the pre-trial publicity had hopelessly prejudiced the case. He would then have jailed some of the hostile commentators until they had purged their contempt. However, it is just as well that Black has decided to describe exactly how and why he was wrongly convicted.

He does so in fascinating detail, and in language which is always lively and sometimes achieves a kind of wild distinction. He has a genuine gift — almost a genius — for multisyllabic abuse. He indulges this Swiftean propensity too often and too brutally — it is arguable that if he had not lambasted his critics quite so ruthlessly he would not have got into serious legal trouble in the first place.