The English Bar is no longer immune to the celebrity culture. There are lawyers’ equivalents to Hello! magazine and the Oscars ceremony; lists of the 100 most, top ten, five to follow, proliferate. But peer and public recognition do not always coincide. To that rule Michael (or more usually Mike) Mansfield is a notable exception. He is indisputably the most high- profile barrister of his generation, both within and beyond the profession, and for that reason alone his memoirs, published to celebrate what he claims to be his retirement from practice, were always likely to be of interest.
Expectations are amply fulfilled. This is essentially a fascinating and passionate record of the author’s major cases in courts, inquests and public inquiries, whose context will be as familiar to the general reader as to the lawyer, and which concerned or raised issues beyond the narrowly legal.
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