I Fought the Law

by Dan Kieran

In an attempt to raise a dormant spirit lying somewhere between Fred Dibnah and Bonnie and Clyde, Dan Kieran has been on a journey to discover why life in modern Britain is so absurd and unfulfilling, and he has realized that everything comes down to just one thing: British law. And these very laws are becoming as eccentric as moustache clubs, shin-kicking championships, and even, God bless her, the Queen. And on his travels, Dan finds he’s not alone, for there are multitudes of people battling against the tedium. And so begins a satirical, fun-packed crime spree as Dan joins a group of protestors (five of whom were arrested for eating cakes in Parliament Square), spends the night on the roof of a bus station in Derby, befriends a group of pensioners who were forced to let off stink bombs in a court of law, finds King Arthur alive and well up a tree in Newbury, and discovers how afraid we should really be of terrorism. All types of people will lower themselves to desperate behavior for celebrity status, but no one has ever deliberately become a criminal to point out how authoritarian the British Government has become. Well, not for a while, anyway. Packed with many more hilarious stories, fascinating facts and a sprinkling of sage advice from the likes of Winston Churchill, Admiral Nelson, George Orwell, and William Blake, I Fought the Law is a patriotic celebration of the British spirit – and a call to arms for all those for whom enough is enough!

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

About the author

Dan Kieran is Deputy Editor of The Idler, a bi-yearly British magazine. He is a writer, editor, and CEO and co-founder of the crowd-funding publishing platform Unbound.

Reviews

[Xanthi]

I was at a bit of a disadvantage reading this, having never lived in the UK but there was enough content to make it relatable and enough make it educational. The topic of the book - absurd current laws in the UK - was interesting though the author veered several times into other areas such as politics, economics, climate change, and social justice. Some of that was interesting though I did get bogged down in places.
My biggest gripe about this book was the false advertising but I’m guessing that might have been the fault of the publisher rather than the author. The cover art and the blurb on the back cover gives the impression that the book is lighthearted and funny. It isn’t. From the start, the author admitted that the idea of the book was to pick out archaic laws and break them for his readership’s amusement. However, whilst doing his research he discovered so many current laws that were down right absurd and alarming - not the silly, outdated and relatively harmless ones he was expecting to mock. And so the book took on a new life. It’s a pity the publisher didn’t present the book in a way that it actually reflected the content.

[Maryam]

It took me a while to get into this book but once I did I read it all the way through, turning a rather boring day at work into an entertaining one. Kieran to me is like the British equivalant to Michel Moore. This was a wise book full of plain common sense that will make you laugh out loud. On the other hand, some of the changes in the law such as SOCPA made me feel like we're walking into the 1984.

The plot takes you through a journey. It starts with Kieran going to a meeting at a YMCA, if I can recall correctly, to find out about some protest or something. There he meets some people and so they decide to have a Teddy Bears picnic by parliament. From there he begins his journey of attempting to get arrested for diffrent protests and meeting many diffrent and interesting people who where fighting for changes in the law.

What I found particularly funny about this book was his attempt to find out what being Albion is which he decieds is drinking beer and protesting. Which I supposes is true on some level since Brits do love their beer and complaining about everything. Although they do have it better than most places but I suppose its all the complaining that keeps it at that certain level.

[Scotchneat]

Dan Kieran got up one day and decided a) he needed something interesting to do, and b) the Law in Britain has gone eccentric and possibly evil. So he decided to get out their and break some laws with strangers and then write about it.

I think my favourite civil disobedience was the group of grannies who let off some stinkbombs in a courthouse. Kieran also trespasses to spend the night on the roof of a bus station, eats illicit cake and chases King Arthur.

There's a more serious "call to arms", though. Kieran threads together his adventures as ways of trying to find Albion, the England that stood up, that was better than the Big Brother state that he and many others think modern England has become.

[Humzah Yazdani]

It takes some time to get going but Dan Kieran's personal experiences with the law and his attempts to debunk some ridiculous laws of England, make it an interesting read. Needless to say, it would have taken a lot of guts to break so many laws (at time bordering on public disorder) and rub the authorities the wrong way

[Ann Thomas]

I expected form the title and blurb that this was going to be a light-hearted and amusing book. However, the author discovered that there are plenty of recent laws that don't make sense and decided to work on breaking them. This means a lot of political discussion, which I found boring. Maybe he has a point, but this was not what I expected so I abandoned it very quickly.