Bon Vivant

The Criminal Bar is no country for young people.  

In the unlikely event that anyone else ever wished to chronicle my headship of Gutteridge Chambers, it might be noticed during my time that almost all the old truths of life in Chambers had been turned on their heads. 

Going it alone: for the barrister with a book inside them, author Mark McCrum offers a guide to self-publishing.  

I’ve written nine books under my own name, seven under other people’s – all traditionally published. So why did I decide to go it alone and publish my novel Fest myself? 

Cyber Crime Law and Practice  

Matthew Richardson 

Wildy 

March 2014 

ISBN: 0854901361 

£95 

Detection and Preservation of Assets in Financial Remedy Claims  

Nigel Dyer QC and Juliet Chapman 

Butterworths Law 

April 2014 

ISBN-13/ISSN: 9781405774048 

£110 

David Wurtzel reviews this year’s Kalisher event, a production of Witness for the Prosecution in Middle Temple Hall in May.  

There can be few better causes than the Kalisher Trust, founded in 1996 for the purpose of helping talented students and young barristers with limited means who want to practice in criminal law. 

Andrew Clarke QC reviews the Bar Choral Society’s inaugural concert.  

On 23 June, the Bar Choral Society (BSC) gave its inaugural concert in Temple Church. It is idle to speculate as to why it has taken the Bar so long to have a choir of its own. 

Eerie times in the courts.  

I try to get in all my sitting days as a Recorder of the Crown Court in one go if I can. I quite enjoy the daily routine with no annoying clients, witnesses or judges. Indeed, I am the annoying judge for a season. 

Holiday plans are spoiled by a dose of reality.  

August is traditionally a time for holidaying, resting, recharging the batteries and cogitating. However, there is always something nagging in the background. Just as I was packing my suitcases with horrific shirts, brightly coloured towels and those dreadful swimming shorts, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that there was an uncompleted questionnaire lying on my study desk about the future of the Bar. 

Celebrating an independent judiciary.  

This week saw me chugging along by train out of Victoria to the southern confines of my circuit. I was covering, by part time judging as a Recorder, one of those inevitable periods in the life of a publicly funded Silk that actors call “resting” and we call “working on papers”. Unwisely, I travelled First Class. My efforts to balance a fi le on a Formica table the size of a postage stamp had nearly succeeded when an evil smelling creature boarded the train together with an emaciated whippet. Both stared at me. 

That is the trouble with Lord Mansfield: you don’t hear about the guy for decades and suddenly two of him turn up at once. First, the true version in the recent biography (reviewed on page 26) and now the fictional version in the film Belle, in which Tom Wilkinson plays the great Lord Chief Justice with his customary blend of authority and rough but genuine kindness.   

It centres round a short period in the life of his great-niece, Dido Belle Murray, the illegitimate daughter of his nephew and of a black slave and who was brought up as part of the family with his legitimate niece, Elizabeth. This being 2014, there is a warning that the film contains “a brief sexual assault and discrimination theme”, a warning indeed that 21st century sensibilities may conflict with 18th century reality.