Some moaning at the Bar

This is a sad little story of the author’s annus horribilis as a pupil barrister in the late Nineties. Today the Bar bends ever deeper before the winds of modernisation — an all-graduate profession which subordinates even the best and brightest to the continuing rigours of further training and examination, piling acronym upon acronym — for those without a law degree the CPE (Common Professional Education) and for those with any degree the BVC (Bar Vocational Course). But the apprentice year as a tutee of a junior barrister remains in the new millennium the Bar’s mummified memorial to its mediaeval origins.

Harry Mount assures his readership that, while his gruesome chambers’ characters are ‘composite characters and essentially the author’s own inventions’ (but isn’t there a difference between putting together and making up?) ‘everything that takes place is based on real incidents’ (but how broad is the basis?). It is as well that he does so since otherwise he would risk a suspension of belief.