Time Bomb

Fifty years after the Guildford bombings, the case remains profoundly relevant today. This new edition is completely updated and revised with startling new material. The Guildford Four endured 15 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit. The only evidence against them was their confessions extracted through intimidation and violence. Three Surrey police officers were acquitted of wrongdoing in 1993, but as this new edition reveals, there is testimony, never published, that corroborates evidence of far wider police malpractice.

Time Bomb was central to the reopening of the case of the Guildford Four when it was published in 1988 — exposing this egregious miscarriage of justice, and telling the chilling parallel story of the men actually responsible for the bombings, the London Active Service Unit, whose 1974–75 IRA campaign terrorised Britain. Profoundly relevant today, as Michael Mansfield identifies in his introduction, the case of the Guildford Four is essentially the prototype of the corruption and concealment scandals which have beset the UK, from the Stephen Lawrence case through to the Post Office scandal, and asks how we can galvanise reform.

'Every twist and turn needs to be lived by the reader… page after page of compelling and mesmerising fact. As you proceed, the magnitude of these events strikes a sense of burning injustice.' Michael Mansfield