Spanning over 2 centuries, James Gregory's Mercy and British Culture, 1760 -1960 provides a wide-reaching yet detailed overview of the concept of mercy in British cultural history. While there are many histories of justice and punishment, mercy has been a neglected element despite recognition as an important feature of the 18th-century criminal code. Split into 3 main parts, the first section looks at mercy's religious and philosophical aspects, its cultural representations and its embodiment; the second focuses on the perception and reality of royal acts of mercy from the Hanoverian accession to Victoria's death; and the third looks at large-scale mobilisation of mercy discourses in Ireland, during the French Revolution, in the British empire, and in warfare from the American war of independence to the First World War. The study concludes by examining mercy's place in a twentieth century shaped by total war, atomic bomb, and decolonisation concludes the study.