15/01/2012

You can't read this book: why libel tourists love london

"At their best, journalists expose the crimes of the powerful and there were plenty of powerful people worthy of examination in the Britain of the early 2000s. London was awash with money as it competed with Manhattan to be the hub of global finance. The despots challenged in the Arab Spring channelled their stolen wealth through the City. Oligarchs from around the world flocked to Britain because it offered them the rule of law, protection from assassins, luxury shops, art galleries, Georgian town houses, country estates and public schools that could train their sons in the gentlemanly style. If journalists tried to do what they should do and investigate them, Britain also gave the oligarchs a further privilege: the power to enforce a censorship that the naive supposed had vanished with the repressions of the old establishment. Among the many attractions London offered the oligarchs was a legal profession that served them as attentively as the shop assistants in Harrods food hall..."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/15/you-cant-read-this-book-extract .
 
Author Organisation: The Guardian