'[A] vivid, inquiring memoir... A properly soul-searching book' - Tim Adams, Observer

As one of our leading campaigners for justice, human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has spent a lifetime getting to know his clients - from detainees in Guantanamo Bay to prisoners facing execution on Death Row - and finding out, in his own words, 'what makes them tick'.

But for much of his life, closer to home, there was a man whose mind remained off limits: his own father. It was only years after Dick's death, when Clive inherited more than 3,000 of his letters, that he could finally take a breath and start to piece together the obsessive personality behind them.

In The Far Side of the Moon, Stafford Smith seeks the broad conversation about mental illness that was not accessible in his earlier years, reflecting on his father's fragmented life together with that of Larry Lonchar, a client who also struggled with severe depression, and whose fate continues to preoccupy him.

Following the critically acclaimed Injustice, this courageous new book is an indictment of the failures in our social and justice systems, a meditation on privilege and its consequences, and an intimate exploration of how the mind's hinterlands can impact a family and shape a life.

About the Author
Clive Stafford Smith is a lawyer specialising in defending those accused of the most serious crimes, and is founder and Director of UK legal charity Reprieve. Based in the US for twenty-six years, he now works from the UK where he continues to defend prisoners on Death Row, and challenges the continued incarceration of those held in secret prisons around the world. He has secured the release of 65 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay and still acts for fifteen more. His book Bad Men (shortlisted for the 2008 Orwell Prize) described this campaign. Alongside many other awards, in 2000 he received an OBE for 'humanitarian services'. His second book Injustice was shortlisted for the 2013 Orwell Prize and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger.

Reviews
[A] vivid, inquiring memoir... In unpicking this history within himself, in what is a properly soul-searching book, Stafford Smith finds useful ways to ask the hardest of questions about crime and punishment -- Tim Adams * Observer *



Book Information
ISBN 9781787301924
Author Clive Stafford Smith
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Harvill Secker
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 478g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 150mm * 35mm