(Not Neil trying to flog stuff, I have stolen it off Facebook! – Ed)
Having retired from the District Bench, I have gone into print.
This is a collection of legal anecdotes, most of them humorous, a few of them more thought-provoking, starting with a number of approaches to greeting the judge, some of which are perhaps more prudent than others. We encounter a number of improbable things that people have done and a number of improbable things people have said. Of course, to err is human, and to really foul things up takes a computer, so we have some mishearings and malapropisms – when one member of the Bar received a letter which the person dictating it intended should thank her for her assistance, what did it actually say? – together with some remarkable things achieved by computer spell-checks.
After exploring some aspects of sex and marriage, we learn what the Registrar found in his kettle one lunchtime in Bletchley, and swallow very hard indeed.
The criminal courts – judges, jurors and others – offer further material, including one of the more improbable ways of being a thoroughly inconsiderate HGV driver and getting away with it. Clue – being bilingual may help.
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible, of course, as is made clear when we learn one reason why the Government wanted to intern a man in 1941. And, perhaps, what sort of behaviour on the part of a solicitor one reader at Bedford library actually did regard as beyond the pale.
We also have the one and only Lord Denning explaining why children are like trees.
This book, which is illustrated with some cartoons on legal themes by my former colleague the late Jeff Bower, is divided into fairly short chapters suitable, I hope, for lightening your mood on the bus or Tube on the way to the office/chambers/courtroom/wherever.
