Bon Vivant

William Byfield, Gutteridge Chambers 

This is what we’ve come to ... no longer just having our fees cut to the bone, hitting the good and the bad alike, but being second-guessed by incompetents.

14 February 2011: 

“I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”  
– Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Act II, Sc II), William Shakespeare 

How many barristers, walking past Temple Church on their way from court to chambers, realise that they are eyeballing one of the most historically and architecturally important medieval buildings in London? 

The Temple Church in London:
History, Architecture, Art
Edited by Robin Griffith-Jones and David Park
ISBN 9781843834984; £30
The Boydell Press (available at Temple Church) 

William Byfield, Gutteridge Chambers
To hell with slashed fees, the BSB, higher taxes, HM Government, and my client in the Claude Allerick trial! In the frozen countryside, there lurks worse.   

15 January 2011:
“… look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”

 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,
Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle 

The Inner Temple recently put on a rehearsed reading of “Theseus & the Minotaur – What Really Happened”. The playwright, Andrew Caldecott QC, explains the background and the play’s narrator, Nigel Pascoe QC, discusses his experience 

Marina Cantacuzino explains the work of The Forgiveness Project 

One evening back in 2002, local ITV news reported the story of a three-year-old girl who had died in a London hospital after mistakenly being given the wrong drug. As the parents, lawyers and hospital staff emerged from the coroner’s court the interviewer thrust a microphone under the father’s nose and asked him how he felt about the doctor responsible for his daughter’s death. 

Snigdha Nag reviews Made In Dagenham  

Stephanie Hawthorne picks out her favourite features from her tenure as Editor 

Lord Justice Sedley reviews three books on the topic of international law and piracy.  

Among the casualties of warfare during the last hundred years have been many of the rules governing the conduct of hostilities. The Hague and Geneva Conventions describe the members of warring States’ armies and militias as “lawful combatants”. The reason they contain no category of “unlawful combatant” is that no such antithesis is recognised in international law. The counterpart of the lawful combatant is the civilian, who is entitled to the ordinary protection of the law. 

From investment management to investment madness?  

Graham Nutter, the owner of the Chateau St Jacques d’Albas vineyard in France, on why and how he got into the wine business. 

The Inns are alive with the sound of music. Vanora Bennett explores the world of the other dedicated professionals of the Inns of Court 

At about five o’clock on any day of the week, the Inns of Court will be busy with preoccupied men and women in black, trundling wheelie bags of documents back to chambers after a busy day in court. Yet even the most hurried barristers may slow and smile as they pass the honey stone of Temple Church. The sound that prompts this reaction is the pure treble voices of the Temple’s choirboys drifting out into the evening air – the other dedicated professionals of the Inns, still practising. 

A thriving music scene 

The Temple Choir – 18 boys serving an apprenticeship lasting five or six years, and 12 professional choirmen – is (in my possibly prejudiced view as the parent of a Temple choirboy) one of the most remarkable features of the thriving music scene at the Inns of Court. The CD released by the choir this summer – “The Majesty of Thy Glory” – reveals an extraordinary musical combination of poise and passion. The choir’s repertoire ranges from cantatas to Christmas carols. This might not be so astonishing if the only performers were the knowledgeable choirmen, building up their London singing careers – but it is an almost incredible achievement for the schoolboys who, whenever sighted in the flesh, dodging between long thin black-clad legs outside the church, seem to have nothing more remarkable than football or skateboards on their minds.