Every action has a consequence.

September 22, 2025 – Richard Eyre

I thought as I walked into Tudor Street that Andrew, our senior clerk’s departure had been greeted rather in the same way as a death: we remembered the best (there was much) and forgot or pardoned the worst (there was little). Then I remembered an embarrassing situation that had happened in somewhat unusual circumstances. It was a long while ago.

Our Head of Chambers then had been a man called Roderick Vavasour. He was the epitome of class and style with a soupçon of raffishness. He ruled Chambers as a benevolent despot. Andrew had not long been appointed our senior clerk and there were the rumblings of discontent usual at the beginning of any reign. It would have settled down happily had it not been for one little thing…

Charles Edson was a contemporary in Chambers who was exceptionally clever and mildly eccentric. At one stage he had lived in North London but, having decided that there was more to life than flogging round our courts, he increasingly concentrated on practising in rather remoter locations where he eventually bought a house. This meant his appearances in Chambers were often a month or more apart.

One warm May, Hetty Briar-Pitt, Paddy Corkill and myself, looking much younger, were co-defending with Charles in a Crown Court around 25 miles from Chambers known for having rather difficult judges with some prosecutors to match. With the exception of Edson, we were all rather miffed with Andrew for having accepted these instructions on our behalf to appease a local solicitor who briefed Charles much more often than us.

About a week later he made one of his occasional visits to Chambers and we all ‘tea’d’ in Inner Temple where at least one of us was a member (in those days that was required) and where the crumpets were splendid even if the Cornish butter was dedicated to St Cholesterol. Charles looked as if he had indigestion and, over tea and greasy fingers, whispered to us that the same local solicitor was very unhappy about Andrew who had been uncooperative with them over a particular barrister they wanted. Still smarting about our own incarceration in the previous trial, we urged Charles to complain to Vavasour and make him do something, saying we would back him up.

Charles did; the next time he came to Chambers – precisely six weeks and three days later. In the interim, we had completely forgotten all about it. Andrew had found me a very nice fraud case in London, fifth on the indictment, and, as for Andrew’s rudeness to the solicitor, I had by chance found out from the barrister in demand herself how this solicitor had been fussing about Andrew’s refusal to accept instructions for the next October, but that in fact she was already briefed to prosecute a very serious and lengthy drugs importation at that time. Andrew had both correctly and truthfully been frank with her from the beginning.

On arriving in Chambers, however, six weeks later, Charles Edson (whose Chambers’ time was operating rather as Jupiter’s solar orbit does with Earth’s) had gone to Vavasour to make his complaint, mentioning our full support. I discovered this on returning when Andrew cornered an unsuspecting me in the narrow corridor of our ground floor. ‘May I have a word with you, sir?’ I will pass over the detail of the ghastly conversation. I tried with weak force to say it wasn’t just me, and that I had thought it had all passed, and that I agreed the solicitor was a total waste of space. I got short shrift. ‘Miss Briar-Pitt and Mr Corkhill wouldn’t have done it without you, sir. Nor would Mr Edson. None of them.’ I didn’t know whether this was an insult or a compliment. He finished, though, suddenly by saying that it was all right. We wouldn’t speak of it again. And we didn’t, but I never forgot both what I did and what Andrew did not do.

Times change. Here we are in 2025. It is another age. More trials and tribulations. Some different, some depressingly similar. I walked into Chambers. George, the new senior clerk, had been our former first junior clerk. The Management Committee decided on a quick succession. I like George and opened the door to the clerks’ room wearing a genuine smile. I noticed immediately that his great news had been marred by an accident. ‘George,’ I said, ‘what did you do to your eye?’ He had a shiner. ‘The fact the position wasn’t advertised didn’t go down too well in the Temple, sir,’ he said with a rueful smile.