I’m a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, and a writer. My first book was a guide to Prague, written soon after the 1989 revolution, and though the current version is pretty useless, I still visit the city regularly and remain very fond of the first three editions. In 2005, I wrote The Trial: A History, from Socrates to O.J. Simpson, and my latest book is Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari’a Law, a critique of Islamic jurisprudence which combines history, on-the-ground research in south Asia and the Middle East, and contemporary political analysis. I also continue to do legal work, and visited Syria at the beginning of the current unrest (in March 2011) on behalf of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. The report I helped write, which led to the suspension of Syria from the International Bar Association, is accessible via this link. In August 2012, I travelled to Myanmar/Burma as the rapporteur for another IBAHRI delegation, and that report is here.