Thomas Grant

What a gem of a book!

Jeremy Hutchinson will turn 101 next month and has enjoyed a particularly rich and eventful life. He qualified for the Bar in 1939 though his legal career was put on hold while he served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. Returning from service he stood as the Labour Parliamentary Candidate for the Westminster constituency in 1946 (and actually canvassed No. 10 Downing Street where, having been advised that Winston Churchill was away, he delivered his electoral pitch to the domestic and official staff). He was also married to theatrical legend, Dame Peggy Ashcroft.

Having failed to secure the seat he set about establishing himself as one of the most capable barristers of his generation. He would go on to participate in several of the most significant court cases of the latter half of the twentieth century, representing clients as diverse as Soviet spies George Blake and John Vassall, Christine Keeler, Penguin Books (in the celebrated case attending the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover), The Daily Telegraph and celebrity cannabis smuggler Howard Marks.

Thomas Grant weaves the accounts of the trials together deftly, and the contextual précis he offers for each case combine to give an entertaining and enlightening social history of Britain during the 1960s through to the early 1980s. Jeremy, later Lord, Hutchinson shines through as a beacon of integrity, as happy upsetting the establishment under the Labour Governments of Wilson and Callaghan as when he was challenging iniquities emanating from Margaret Thatcher's administration.

The cases are grouped together thematically, rather than in chronological order, presenting an insight into the changing social mores. Grant is himself an accomplished barrister, and his recapitulation of the cases is clear, crisp and engaging, immediately accessible and appreciated even by a legal ignoramus such as myself.… (meer)