Introduction

Abstract

Hovering about the essays in this volume are questions of evidence, of fact and of proof — reports of the death of the author evidently having been greatly exaggerated. ‘Evidence’ means the bits of data on which one rests a conclusion. In most settings — in courtrooms as well as the judgements of ordinary life — fragmentary data of all sorts are accepted into evidence. For it is only rarely that a single piece of evidence is in itself a proof that establishes a conclusion of fact. Confessions are notoriously unreliable, and without photographs or eye-witness accounts evidence is usually cumulative and circumstantial.

‘Artificial divisions. Yes. They absolutely bedevil us here. Always the same. Anti-French, pro-French, Communist, anti-Communist. Sheer nonsense, but we do it time and again.... So dreadfully wrong. We argue about definitions when we should be arguing about facts.’ John Le Carré¹