Published: 13 Feb 2026
Nothing But The Truth: Stories of Crime, Guilt and the Loss of Innocence
- Release date: 2022
- Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir, True Crime
- Themes/Moods: Medium-paced, Informative, Reflective
- Rating: 2.5/5
I really wasn’t sure what I expected given the inherent absurdity of the concept of an “anonymous autobiography” - but in sum the book is an attempt to bring an insider/personal experience on both training to be and becoming a barrister within the UK Justice system, whilst simultaneously outlining personal “character development”/evolution from a quote-on-quote stereotypical Daily Mail reader in their attitude to the justice system to something more nuanced. However, vast amounts of the book are merely disconnected fragments, anecdotes and vignettes of all wildly varying quality which makes the supposed throughline narrative at each chapter (both literally in the book but also within SB’s life) much less clear, and somewhat unfocused as a result. Despite this, there’s plenty to like on shining a light on a system that is both very opaque and remarkably chaotic and dysfunctional (where, naively, you would hope and expect the opposite) and turns it into a very good advert (amongst many) that I should never involve myself in the legal system if possible, but also that there’s plenty of good work done by people within said legal system despite only having access to crude tools and inflexible processes that could always be improved.
