Being wrongly accused of destroying a particularly ugly garden pond ornament in a neighbour’s garden when I was six years old was probably my first contact with the law that I can remember. Being challenged, as a young motorcyclist, by a police officer: “Where do you think you are? Bloody Brands Hatch?” is another early memory. Until university, such contacts were few.
A career at the Bar was a remote prospect to the son of a machine tool engineer in the Midlands. With no lawyers in the family, or among family friends, and with no information about careers in the law available at the local grammar school I attended, a legal career for me was not even on the horizon, let alone in contemplation.
