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November 23, 2025 – Michael T Flynn
Last week, I found a temporary cure to growing older: giving a speech after a dinner at my old university’s law society. Sitting next to undergraduates, I felt the years roll back and instinctively knew that the speech I had written was useless. A really strong, sudden instinct told me that it needed to be extempore. As I spoke, the kind of humour I deployed in university debates all those years before came back and I found, surprisingly, that not so much had changed. As part of the flow, I talked about my time as the moral supervisor of a Crammers nearby and of its extraordinary principal, Paul, a polymath extraordinaire – from Ancient Greek to DIY.
I worked in the office, a mediaeval building with a warren of passages. Some rooms also had interconnecting hatches, their doors masked by paintings. I remember once using Paul’s room to counsel a highly strung student who was complaining of hallucinations. We sat on deep leather chairs opposite one another. I comforted him and was saying that I would arrange some professional assistance when suddenly he paled and started pointing. I feared he was having an episode, but, when I turned round to look at the wall behind my chair, I realised that the hatch with the painting had opened and the registrar’s head had appeared through the adjoining wall to ask me a question. The effect was to make him look disembodied. The student’s screams penetrated to the estate agents next door.
Paul never ever accepted that something ‘could not be done’. Just one of many examples was the Establishment chequebook. It was his creation: very large, retro, dignified and hard to mislay. One day, he summoned me which he often did when dealing with awkward people solely because I had a law degree. This time it was officials from his bank come to tell him that they could no longer produce his cheques. Paul, who loved situations like this, asked why. It was, they said, the new machines which collated cheques and could not accommodate the size of his. He showed huge interest in the technicalities of the problem and sympathy for their predicament.
As soon as they departed, I was asked to obtain the manuals for this machine and Paul, together with an engineering don, proved conclusively that the objection was rubbish and that his cheques would fit with ease. The officials returned whence Paul, displaying now a technical knowledge far greater than theirs, forced a concession that the original explanation had been a lie. The true reason was that the chequebooks looked old-fashioned in their view and the bank was trying to project a modern, international air. As Paul pointed out, the limited circulation of his cheques was hardly likely to affect the bank’s worldwide image and the chequebooks returned. One almost felt sorry for bureaucracies, railways, post offices, exam boards who in any conflict with him had to concede defeat. He even discovered that British Rail could provide pre-ordered meals on inter-city trains, with flower arrangement, and loved to tell everyone of a Scotland to London train being held at Edinburgh Waverley while his soufflé was carried at high speed down the platform by a young chef. I don’t think anyone else knew that this service even existed.
I have been on Circuit, defending in a case which has some legal difficulties, to put it mildly. Charming judge, a firm and skilled opponent whose family were doubtless holding manorial courts from the time of the Conquest, a highly likeable junior who predicts my needs before they have arisen and a once-modern court crumbling away. At least the prison van is arriving on time. Colleagues up and down the country say that this is rare. Some convoluted schemes have been created to clear the backlog which will doubtless be trimmed by a zealous treasury into rough justice on the cheap. But why can’t we get prisoners to court on time in the 21st century? Why can’t the public, practitioners and judges be fed modestly at court with their existing purpose-built kitchens and dining areas? Why can’t courts be maintained even to a semi-decent state? Why are we so utterly and hopelessly defeatist from the very start? And, if we can’t even manage something as simple as these things, how in the name of sanity do we imagine that the state can cope with complex problems?
Paul’s great mantra was that ‘can’t do’ did not exist. You challenged him on that at your peril. Perhaps a lesson for us too…
William Byfield is the pseudonym of a senior member of the Bar. Gutteridge Chambers, and the events that happen there, are entirely fictitious.
November 23, 2025 – Michael T Flynn
Last week, I found a temporary cure to growing older: giving a speech after a dinner at my old university’s law society. Sitting next to undergraduates, I felt the years roll back and instinctively knew that the speech I had written was useless. A really strong, sudden instinct told me that it needed to be extempore. As I spoke, the kind of humour I deployed in university debates all those years before came back and I found, surprisingly, that not so much had changed. As part of the flow, I talked about my time as the moral supervisor of a Crammers nearby and of its extraordinary principal, Paul, a polymath extraordinaire – from Ancient Greek to DIY.
I worked in the office, a mediaeval building with a warren of passages. Some rooms also had interconnecting hatches, their doors masked by paintings. I remember once using Paul’s room to counsel a highly strung student who was complaining of hallucinations. We sat on deep leather chairs opposite one another. I comforted him and was saying that I would arrange some professional assistance when suddenly he paled and started pointing. I feared he was having an episode, but, when I turned round to look at the wall behind my chair, I realised that the hatch with the painting had opened and the registrar’s head had appeared through the adjoining wall to ask me a question. The effect was to make him look disembodied. The student’s screams penetrated to the estate agents next door.
Paul never ever accepted that something ‘could not be done’. Just one of many examples was the Establishment chequebook. It was his creation: very large, retro, dignified and hard to mislay. One day, he summoned me which he often did when dealing with awkward people solely because I had a law degree. This time it was officials from his bank come to tell him that they could no longer produce his cheques. Paul, who loved situations like this, asked why. It was, they said, the new machines which collated cheques and could not accommodate the size of his. He showed huge interest in the technicalities of the problem and sympathy for their predicament.
As soon as they departed, I was asked to obtain the manuals for this machine and Paul, together with an engineering don, proved conclusively that the objection was rubbish and that his cheques would fit with ease. The officials returned whence Paul, displaying now a technical knowledge far greater than theirs, forced a concession that the original explanation had been a lie. The true reason was that the chequebooks looked old-fashioned in their view and the bank was trying to project a modern, international air. As Paul pointed out, the limited circulation of his cheques was hardly likely to affect the bank’s worldwide image and the chequebooks returned. One almost felt sorry for bureaucracies, railways, post offices, exam boards who in any conflict with him had to concede defeat. He even discovered that British Rail could provide pre-ordered meals on inter-city trains, with flower arrangement, and loved to tell everyone of a Scotland to London train being held at Edinburgh Waverley while his soufflé was carried at high speed down the platform by a young chef. I don’t think anyone else knew that this service even existed.
I have been on Circuit, defending in a case which has some legal difficulties, to put it mildly. Charming judge, a firm and skilled opponent whose family were doubtless holding manorial courts from the time of the Conquest, a highly likeable junior who predicts my needs before they have arisen and a once-modern court crumbling away. At least the prison van is arriving on time. Colleagues up and down the country say that this is rare. Some convoluted schemes have been created to clear the backlog which will doubtless be trimmed by a zealous treasury into rough justice on the cheap. But why can’t we get prisoners to court on time in the 21st century? Why can’t the public, practitioners and judges be fed modestly at court with their existing purpose-built kitchens and dining areas? Why can’t courts be maintained even to a semi-decent state? Why are we so utterly and hopelessly defeatist from the very start? And, if we can’t even manage something as simple as these things, how in the name of sanity do we imagine that the state can cope with complex problems?
Paul’s great mantra was that ‘can’t do’ did not exist. You challenged him on that at your peril. Perhaps a lesson for us too…
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