*/
Best books, favourite films, top tracks and an essential: Counsel invites barristers to share their cultural influences. In this issue, we talk to James Cartwright, a criminal barrister at 1MCB who also paints, sculpts and runs BEWCC, the cricket team representing the Bar in the Lawyers Cricket World Cup which he co-founded.
A key word in my Barrister’s Best brief is ‘civilisation’. Stowe School (pictured) has one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world and all those years ago, its beauty soaked in. There was a handful of brilliant teachers and Ars Longa easily lodged in this young pupil. The building blocks of an individual life are usually laid down early and I read The Last of the Just by André Schwarz-Bart; I don’t believe I understood it at the time but it sits now in my mind, a warning, a scripture, a test. This happened in my lifetime, Treblinka v Stowe.
Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Goya’s Disasters of War and Picasso’s vast output are witnesses to their time and thought and require different tools, especially history, in their appreciation. They are good because they are true. A sketch can catch what a finished picture may not and all art and literature contributes to our understanding of the human condition. Unfortunately, art has little effect upon mankind’s proclivity to oppression and destruction. The deterrent for that lies in politics, economics (a well-filled belly), a working law and institutions; above all, a watch on corruption. But this is outside my brief.
In my view, the greatest sculptures are Michaelangelo’s Pietà and Shelley’s two vast and trunkless legs of stone. The one is the human, the other is the inhuman. The human endures and the inhuman perishes. The ‘human’ is, of course, people, and therein lies the secret. You can, as Auden said, only love what you possess, your family and friends. Your team, your country? Well, I cannot say, it is too abstract.
If it has something to say, it is good. Rev Gary Davis’s Cocaine Blues, a 1930s guitar piece, is nothing but it paints for me a picture of a lone man adrift in the hugeness of America and is as strong as Britten’s War Requiem. I try to eliminate the academic categories. I love the way the Americans have been singing about their country and troubles since long before the Delta blues. It is not as sophisticated as Mozart (The Marriage of Figaro is sublime), but it works.
Life at the criminal Bar is a privilege. Detached but involved, a barrister quickly learns of the tensions inherent in life, the individual and the team, power and the state and the need to be, above all, professional; a case well-fought maintains society. It is so easy, too, to retreat, when needed, into one’s own world, to write, to paint, to sing, to be oneself. Of course, in some ways, that retreat is even more precious than earning a living. Writing, painting, music being essentially evidence of their time and lucky are those barristers who are able to lead a dual life of work and art. ‘A lawyer,’ as Walter Scott said, ‘without literature and history is a mere mechanic.’
It should be apparent that all art, music and writing attracts me. We pass through music, art and books and they pass through us. Talking silently across time, only an individual response is possible. Do others, with hindsight perhaps, hear the collapse of European civilisation when listening to The Merry Widow? Do others, looking at a Goya portrait, see the same person that I do? Was the Duke, the Duke Goya painted? However familiar some of Chaucer’s pilgrims seem, do we really understand what they thought? But I love them all the same. We go back for answers and just for pleasure to all these things because they are important.
However, rising even above this is cricket. The day cricket is played worldwide, the last Treblinka will be demolished.
It will have to be the Colonel Bogey March by Lieutenant FJ Ricketts. Why? Because it is a strong reminder of TA days when we held back the Russian Bear and kept the Iron Curtain drawn. Also the best cricket book by far – C L R James’ Beyond a boundary. The sketch of Cudjoe explains why cricket is life.
A small generation ago, we started a Lawyers’ Cricket World Cup in which, biennially, the Bar team, trotting across the Commonwealth, valiantly takes part in the, so far unrealised, hope that ‘We could win it, chaps.’ The Cup has created a wide web of friendship across a growing number of cricketing lawyers in the Commonwealth (and Eire) and is, without doubt, A Good Thing. Barristers who play cricket will help keep civilisation afloat. The next cup takes place in New Zealand in January 2020 and new recruits should contact jamesiccy@aol.com
A key word in my Barrister’s Best brief is ‘civilisation’. Stowe School (pictured) has one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world and all those years ago, its beauty soaked in. There was a handful of brilliant teachers and Ars Longa easily lodged in this young pupil. The building blocks of an individual life are usually laid down early and I read The Last of the Just by André Schwarz-Bart; I don’t believe I understood it at the time but it sits now in my mind, a warning, a scripture, a test. This happened in my lifetime, Treblinka v Stowe.
Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Goya’s Disasters of War and Picasso’s vast output are witnesses to their time and thought and require different tools, especially history, in their appreciation. They are good because they are true. A sketch can catch what a finished picture may not and all art and literature contributes to our understanding of the human condition. Unfortunately, art has little effect upon mankind’s proclivity to oppression and destruction. The deterrent for that lies in politics, economics (a well-filled belly), a working law and institutions; above all, a watch on corruption. But this is outside my brief.
In my view, the greatest sculptures are Michaelangelo’s Pietà and Shelley’s two vast and trunkless legs of stone. The one is the human, the other is the inhuman. The human endures and the inhuman perishes. The ‘human’ is, of course, people, and therein lies the secret. You can, as Auden said, only love what you possess, your family and friends. Your team, your country? Well, I cannot say, it is too abstract.
If it has something to say, it is good. Rev Gary Davis’s Cocaine Blues, a 1930s guitar piece, is nothing but it paints for me a picture of a lone man adrift in the hugeness of America and is as strong as Britten’s War Requiem. I try to eliminate the academic categories. I love the way the Americans have been singing about their country and troubles since long before the Delta blues. It is not as sophisticated as Mozart (The Marriage of Figaro is sublime), but it works.
Life at the criminal Bar is a privilege. Detached but involved, a barrister quickly learns of the tensions inherent in life, the individual and the team, power and the state and the need to be, above all, professional; a case well-fought maintains society. It is so easy, too, to retreat, when needed, into one’s own world, to write, to paint, to sing, to be oneself. Of course, in some ways, that retreat is even more precious than earning a living. Writing, painting, music being essentially evidence of their time and lucky are those barristers who are able to lead a dual life of work and art. ‘A lawyer,’ as Walter Scott said, ‘without literature and history is a mere mechanic.’
It should be apparent that all art, music and writing attracts me. We pass through music, art and books and they pass through us. Talking silently across time, only an individual response is possible. Do others, with hindsight perhaps, hear the collapse of European civilisation when listening to The Merry Widow? Do others, looking at a Goya portrait, see the same person that I do? Was the Duke, the Duke Goya painted? However familiar some of Chaucer’s pilgrims seem, do we really understand what they thought? But I love them all the same. We go back for answers and just for pleasure to all these things because they are important.
However, rising even above this is cricket. The day cricket is played worldwide, the last Treblinka will be demolished.
It will have to be the Colonel Bogey March by Lieutenant FJ Ricketts. Why? Because it is a strong reminder of TA days when we held back the Russian Bear and kept the Iron Curtain drawn. Also the best cricket book by far – C L R James’ Beyond a boundary. The sketch of Cudjoe explains why cricket is life.
A small generation ago, we started a Lawyers’ Cricket World Cup in which, biennially, the Bar team, trotting across the Commonwealth, valiantly takes part in the, so far unrealised, hope that ‘We could win it, chaps.’ The Cup has created a wide web of friendship across a growing number of cricketing lawyers in the Commonwealth (and Eire) and is, without doubt, A Good Thing. Barristers who play cricket will help keep civilisation afloat. The next cup takes place in New Zealand in January 2020 and new recruits should contact jamesiccy@aol.com
Best books, favourite films, top tracks and an essential: Counsel invites barristers to share their cultural influences. In this issue, we talk to James Cartwright, a criminal barrister at 1MCB who also paints, sculpts and runs BEWCC, the cricket team representing the Bar in the Lawyers Cricket World Cup which he co-founded.
Update from the Chair of the Bar
By Clement Cowley, Partner at The Penny Group
Modernising communication and collaboration at a leading Chancery set. A Zexi case study
How to build profile without compromising professional duties. By Naumaan Farooq, Co-Founder of Inked PR
Marie Law, Director of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs, examines the role of cut-off levels, and the wider range of factors that must be considered when interpreting results for family court proceedings
Endometriosis Awareness North, a charity raising awareness of endometriosis and supporting those affected across the North of England, has received a £500 boost from AlphaBiolabs via the company’s Giving Back initiative
A decade of reviews and research has disrupted accepted thinking in the search for causality. Suicides following abuse have overtaken domestic homicides. Is the law keeping up? Professor Susan Edwards KC (Hon) examines recent cases and the obstacles to successful prosecution
The case against judge-only justice – and why efficiency is not enough. By Professor Leslie Thomas KC
Heritage as an anchor and a compass, finding our common humanity and embracing the power of the outsider – Melina Antoniadis’s lessons learnt
Seeing the full picture – Baljit Ubhey OBE outlines the CPS action plan to tackle violence against women and girls, offering insights directly relevant to courtroom practice
Lauren Fullerton examines the how, what and why of setting up a second chambers base
