The books row has, however, offered a rare glimpse of the breaking heart of English justice. Unfair treatment of prisoners is only one aspect of a justice deficit that should alarm every law-abiding citizen in the land. Next year is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the bill of rights hammered out between King John and his barons. Buried in its text is the brief section that has made the charter a lodestar to upholders of justice down the centuries: “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights and possessions, or outlawed, or exiled… except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”