It's an interesting topic, albeit a gruesome one. The content of A History of Torture in Britain by Simon Webb is pretty much exactly what the title suggests.

From the early days of medieval history to the late 20th century, Webb examines the types of torture that were used and under whose authority they were employed. He talks about the laws allowing or forbidding certain forms of torture, and he provides examples of torture as it was used both within Britain itself and out among its expansive empire. He gets specific, too, in describing the tools and techniques that were used to extract confessions or punish traitors and criminals ... or, in many cases, those merely suspected of wrongdoing.

The book discusses torture as it was carried out in secret and as it was used as public entertainment. In some cases, he provides first-hand accounts of torture as written by its victims or witnesses. He gets specific about torture as a precursor to execution, from a time when capital punishment was meant to cause extreme suffering as part of the sentence.

It's a fascinating topic, although as you might expect the descriptions at times are quite horrible to contemplate. Webb doesn't hold back or soften the imagery, so be prepared to wince at some of his revelations.

The book is, surprisingly, only 139 pages long. The topic seemed to me to be one that would require much more verbiage, but I'll defer to the author's research. Clearly, he knows his subject quite well. Still, Webb too must have thought the book too short, as he is often repetitive -- in a manner that seems designed to pad the length.

There are, too, some ill-considered turns of phrase. Most egregious, in my view, is the author's narrative about an early 18th-century London brothel owner who tricked underage country girls into giving up their virginity to her clients. "All good things must come to an end," Webb says, before describing the raid that shuttered the operation. Really?

He repeats the phrasing in the final chapter. When describing the torture of Northern Irish prisoners in 1971, he says, "All good things, however, come to an end and ... word went out from Downing Street that there was to be no more systematic ill-treatment of prisoners carried out in this way." I assume it's a sarcastic turn of phrase, but it doesn't seem appropriate in the context.

Webb has a habit of talking directly to his readers in a manner unusual in modern nonfiction. Before launching into a description of punishments meted out by a Jamaican slaveowner, for example, he writes, "Readers with delicate sensibilities or who are overly squeamish, would be well advised to skip the next few paragraphs."

He employs an "In this chapter we discussed... and in the next chapter we'll explore..." form of writing that seems more suited to a young reader's textbook than a serious study of history. In addition, he editorializes quite a bit; while readers might agree that torture is abhorent, it's not really the function of the historian to sprinkle personal judgments among the facts. For instance, from the final chapter:

Gazing into and predicting the future is a chancy and uncertain business, but as far as it is possible to say anything definite about the future conduct of any nation, we can be pretty sure that Britain has finished with its long tradition of using torture for good and all, something in which all right-thinking men and women will rejoice. ... Of one thing we may be very glad and that is that torture is now viewed as such a strange and undesirable aberration, that the chances of its ever being used again by the British or their agents is vanishingly small, something which we probably all agree is an improvement on the way things were even a few decades ago.

Laudable sentiments, certainly, but let's remember the book is presented as historical nonfiction, not personal commentary. Perhaps editorializing in an afterword or author's note would have felt less intrusive, but Webb inserts his opinions into the heart of the text entirely too often.