A Handbook on Hanging is a satiric tribute to that unappreciated mainstay of civilisation: the hangman. With barbed wit, Charles Duff not only writes of hanging, but also of electrocution, decapitation and gassing; of innocent men executed and of executions botched; of bloodlust mobs and the political expedients of the great. A classic satire, admired by Bertholt Brecht and Dylan Thomas, Duff’s polemic makes it clear that whatever else capital punishment may be said to be – justice, vengeance, a deterrent – it is certainly killing.