Bon Vivant

David Wurtzel believes the cast deftly balances the personal with the political and imitate without mimicking the historical figures.  

“The promise” is the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 which said that the British Government “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. It lies at the heart of Ben Brown’s fine play, performed in the round at the Orange Tree. For much of the action, the floor is covered by a map of the Ottoman Empire. Not the least of the many historical ironies which run through the production is the sight of British ministers, sitting in London, carving up that Empire before the First World War has actually been won. 

Sir Brian Neill, Richard Rampton QC, Heather Rogers QC,
Timothy Atkinson, Aidan Eardley
LexisNexis, 3rd edition (Aug 2009), £195.00, ISBN 978-0406178312 

Since the first edition of Duncan and Neill in 1978 the libel landscape has changed dramatically and looks set to continue doing so. Juries are no longer “in the position of sheep loosed on an unfenced common, with no shepherd” as Lord Bingham famously described them. More detailed directions are now commonplace and jury awards correspondingly smaller than in their zenith in the 1980’s; to the considerable relief of the popular press.  

Tim Kevan takes a break from the Bar to go surfing and write a novel 

One of the joys of being a barrister is that you are self-employed and therefore get a lot more freedom over your own destiny than many might otherwise have in an employed position. Well, that’s in theory at least and I accept that it might sometimes appear illusory when there’s a backlog of papers sitting on your shelf and court days stacked to the horizon. For my part, I practised as a barrister for over ten years at the common law Bar at 1 Temple Gardens (now Temple Garden Chambers) in London and I had been able to use this flexibility to take breaks by the coast to catch the odd wave when the surfing conditions were right. It also meant that I’d had the chance to indulge another hobby—writing—as well as starting a couple of businesses. But as each of these things started to take more time, I eventually decided to make the jump and take a full-time break from the Bar for a while. 

Book review
Felicity Gerry and Catarina Sjölin
Wildy, Simmonds and Hill, January 2010, £69, ISBN 0854900357 

Once a month, between February 1999 and April 2000—usually on a Thursday—a very disparate group of mainly middle-aged men and women met at Queen Anne’s Gate to talk about sex. Known collectively to ourselves—and to the Home Office receptionists—as the “Sex Offenders” we were the members of Jack Straw’s Steering Group, set up to review the law on sex offences. Essentially we were given a blank sheet of paper on which we were encouraged to set out a blueprint for a new sex offences law for the next generation or three. Our report “Setting the Boundaries” contained a total of 62 recommendations. It was published in July 2000. It formed the basis for the government’s Sexual Offences Bill, which received  Royal Assent on 20 November 2003 and came into force on 1 May 2004. Five years later the new case law is beginning to develop—and the books are starting to proliferate. 

David Ormerod, The Right Honourable Lord Justice Hooper
OUP, October 2009, £221.74 978-0-19-557423-0 

This work is now in its 20th edition since its re-incarnation by HHJ Peter Murphy, who has now stood down as Emeritus Editor. Criminal practitioners, and his publishers, owe him a great debt of gratitude. The teams of contributors and editors are immensely strong, providing as near a guarantee as is possible of an accurate, erudite work which combines practical guidance with excellent analysis. 

Which lawyers have played first class cricket? Daniel Lightman investigates 

There is a long tradition of lawyer-cricketers. Perhaps the first was William Byrd (1674–1744). Born in Virginia, where his father was an early settler from England, he was sent to English public school and went on to be called to the Bar and join the Inner Temple. In 1704, on his father’s death, Byrd returned to Virginia to take over his family’s estates, and is said to have introduced cricket there. Between 1709 and 1712 William Byrd kept a secret diary, the entry for 25 April 1709 recording: “I rose at 6 o’clock and read a chapter in Hebrew. About 10 o’clock Dr Blair, and Major and Captain Harrison came to see us. After I had given them a glass of sack we played cricket. I ate boiled beef for my dinner. Then we played at shooting with arrows and went to cricket again till dark.” 

Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Twelfth Night, 2010. 

I have been reading last year’s Diary entries. I think I was in danger of succumbing to depression just before Christmas. Fortunately, it was the effect of too much work. Andrew, my senior clerk, made up for his deficiencies in finding me any decent work after the summer break by cramming half a year’s work into December. 

21 December 2009: “Humor is reason gone mad” — Groucho Marx. 

I  have always tried to keep this diary cheerful. Who knows, my hard drive may be discovered in a time capsule 100 years hence. Given the problems caused by global warming, it may only be possible to read on rationed electricity when the flooding in one’s house has receded sufficiently. 

Mark Pallis, Legal and Historical Consultant to “Garrow’s Law”, on how he has used his legal background to good effect 

The origins for “Garrow’s Law: Tales from the Old Bailey”, shown on BBC One in November 2009, date back to April 2008. Having tried for several months to get some human rights type programmes off the ground (the feedback from channels was “Great and worthwhile idea, but I think I’ll pass on it”), I was asked to come up with ideas for a legal drama based on real people, real events and real cases. The time period I was given was broadly 1600 to 1900. I was drawn to the late 1700s because they were a time of change: the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution, the beginning of the campaigns for the rights of man, to end slavery and to reform Parliament. Legally, it was it was a time of great change too. On the very front lines of this, dealing with the cut and thrust, and dirt and grime of the Old Bailey, I found the barrister William Garrow. There was very little information about his personal life. In his professional life, Garrow fought to give a bigger role for defence counsel in criminal cases. He had an incredible number of credits to his name, but somehow he missed out on his place in history. This seemed crazy given that he was the first person recorded as saying “Every man shall be innocent until proven guilty” in an English court, and because, by virtue of the sheer force of his personality, he practically singlehandedly invented the modern form of harsh and penetrating cross-examination. Coupled with the fact that he had a “somewhat irregular”’ relationship with the wife of an MP I thought I’d struck drama gold. 

Hilary Tilby discusses the dangers of using alcohol and drugs as coping mechanisms for dealing with a stressful practice and highlights the help at hand 

When you are subject to long-term stress, the result is that you feel grim – not sleeping well; unable to think clearly; losing your joie de vivre; losing confidence in your own judgement and abilities etc. Naturally, you want to feel better, so what do you do? If you are, as is likely to be the case, the normal legal personality (unable to delegate, driven, perfectionist, the A type personality) then you look for a quick fix, because, by definition, the legal personality is too busy to wait for anything to change. It must be immediate. And what has an immediate effect? Nicotine, sugar, and more potentially damaging, alcohol and drugs.