Bon Vivant

Stephanie Hawthorne picks out her favourite features from her tenure as Editor 

Lord Justice Sedley reviews three books on the topic of international law and piracy.  

Among the casualties of warfare during the last hundred years have been many of the rules governing the conduct of hostilities. The Hague and Geneva Conventions describe the members of warring States’ armies and militias as “lawful combatants”. The reason they contain no category of “unlawful combatant” is that no such antithesis is recognised in international law. The counterpart of the lawful combatant is the civilian, who is entitled to the ordinary protection of the law. 

From investment management to investment madness?  

Graham Nutter, the owner of the Chateau St Jacques d’Albas vineyard in France, on why and how he got into the wine business. 

The Inns are alive with the sound of music. Vanora Bennett explores the world of the other dedicated professionals of the Inns of Court 

At about five o’clock on any day of the week, the Inns of Court will be busy with preoccupied men and women in black, trundling wheelie bags of documents back to chambers after a busy day in court. Yet even the most hurried barristers may slow and smile as they pass the honey stone of Temple Church. The sound that prompts this reaction is the pure treble voices of the Temple’s choirboys drifting out into the evening air – the other dedicated professionals of the Inns, still practising. 

A thriving music scene 

The Temple Choir – 18 boys serving an apprenticeship lasting five or six years, and 12 professional choirmen – is (in my possibly prejudiced view as the parent of a Temple choirboy) one of the most remarkable features of the thriving music scene at the Inns of Court. The CD released by the choir this summer – “The Majesty of Thy Glory” – reveals an extraordinary musical combination of poise and passion. The choir’s repertoire ranges from cantatas to Christmas carols. This might not be so astonishing if the only performers were the knowledgeable choirmen, building up their London singing careers – but it is an almost incredible achievement for the schoolboys who, whenever sighted in the flesh, dodging between long thin black-clad legs outside the church, seem to have nothing more remarkable than football or skateboards on their minds. 

As the deadline for nominations for the Bar Pro Bono Award 2010 approaches, Georgina Closs asks six previous winners – who have all made an outstanding contribution to pro bono work – what it means to win the Award.  

Each year, the Sydney Elland Goldsmith Pro Bono Award recognises the sets of chambers and members of the Bar who have made an outstanding contribution to pro bono work over the course of the year. With the nominations deadline for the 2010 award approaching fast, I interviewed six previous award winners – Andrew Walker, Michael Fordham QC, Keir Starmer QC DPP, Andrew Hall QC, Samantha Knights and Judith Farbey – to gauge their experiences of pro bono work and what it meant to win the Award. 

Beer: The Singular Case of Donoghue v Stevenson
Matthew Chapman
Wildy, Simmonds and Hill; Hardback (December 2009); £14.99 ISBN: 0854900497 

“You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who, then, in law is my neighbour? The answer seems to be – persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called into question” per Lord Atkin. 

1876–2009
Edited by Louis Blom-Cooper, Brice Dickson and Gavin Drewry
Oxford University Press; Hardback (August 2009); £95
ISBN: 0199532710 

There are lessons for the Bar in this musical, believes David Wurtzel. 

Legally Blonde (Savoy Theatre) proves that good new musicals can still be written. They can also be performed by your favourite television stars who are indeed able to sing, dance and do dialogue (with occasional breathlessness) on stage. The combination is perfect: the women steal the show, the men provide the eye candy and the audience, who greet it with remarkable knowingness, gives it a standing ovation. You do not have to have seen the movie and I suspect that I am glad that I didn’t. It is easier to suspend disbelief in a theatre than in the cinema. Legally Blonde belongs in a theatre. Luckily, the entire cast led by Sheridan Smith with wonderful star quality and timing, plays it straight, though with gays, a lesbian and sexual harassment, straight may not be quite the word. 

Edited by Chris Miele
Merrell Publishers; Hardback (April 2010); £35
ISBN: 1858945070 

This book is one of the best things to come out of the transformation of the Middlesex Guildhall from a Crown Court into the Supreme Court. Lavishly illustrated with superb photographs, plans and drawings, it is also a wonderful read. There are eight essays from, amongst others, Lady Hale, Lord Bingham, and top notch art and architectural historians. Together they explain the judicial functions of the House of Lords leading to the creation of the Supreme Court, the history of the building and its predecessors on this site, the architecture of the present Guildhall together with its glorious decorative arts and sculpture inside and out, and the iconography of supreme courts in the common law world which over the decades has moved from imperial grandeur to glass box transparency. 

Suffering from pains or aches? There are three key areas to focus on, advises Christopher Belderbos