Benchmark: Life, Laughter and the Law

Author:   Oliver Popplewell ,  Stephen Fry (actor)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN:  

9781845119324


Pages:   328
Publication Date:   30 March 2009
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Benchmark: Life, Laughter and the Law


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Overview

Sir Oliver Popplewella's career goes a long way to explode myths and to show what judges are really like: impartial, skilled in the law, above party politics certainly, but essentially human. He was certainly born into a comfortable middle-class family, but his upbringing was (to quote from Stephen Frya's Foreword to this book) ""more Betjeman Metroland than Wodehouse Mayfaira"". Sir Oliver was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple and a successful career at the junior bar and on the Oxford and Midland Circuit culminated in his becoming a QC and his subsequent elevation to the High Court Bench. Various high profile cases followed involving public figures - Jonathan Aitken, Lawrence Dallaglio, the England rugby captain, or the sprinter Linford Christie in Christie v McVicar, the editor of Spike magazine - and the public enquiry into the tragic fire at the Bradford City football ground. This autobiography is an absorbing portrait of the career of one of England's most distinguished lawyers, recounted in a witty, intelligent and effortlessly engaging style.

Full Product Details

Author:   Oliver Popplewell ,  Stephen Fry (actor)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   I.B. Tauris
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.363kg
ISBN:  

9781845119324


ISBN 10:   1845119320
Pages:   328
Publication Date:   30 March 2009
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Illustrations Foreword, by Stephen Fry Prelude: 'I'll Move it, Guv'nor' 1. Childhood 2. Growing Up 3. National Service 4. University 5. Cambridge Cricket 6. Family and Friends 7. First Steps at the Bar 8. Bradford 9. Jonathan Aiken 10. A Legal Miscellany 11. Employment Appeal Tribunal 12. Murder 13. Parole 14. The MCC and the Bailey Affair 15. Imran Khan and Barry Wood 16. Lottery at Lords and 'Pie in the Sky' 17. Reflections

Reviews

A delightful book. Here is a life of integrity, intelligence, decency, diligence and public service retold in a clear and self-deprecating style that captures the reader from the last paragraph to the last. From the Foreword by Stephen Fry. 'I commend Benchmark to anyone who likes to read of distinguished men who lead honest and interesting times, but are not too pompous to recall the time they drank the last of the milk during rationing.' Rachel Johnson, 'The Sunday Times'.


Author Information

Prior to his retirement, the Honorable Sir Oliver Popplewell was a distinguished High Court judge for nearly twenty years and was involved in a number of celebrated cases over the course of his long career. He subsequently returned to university to take a degree in PPE at Harris Manchester College as Oxford's oldest undergraduate. The second volume of his memoirs, Hallmark: A Judge's Life at Oxford , is also published by I.B.Tauris.

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