JEREMY HUTCHINSON'S CASE HISTORIES: FROM LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER TO HOWARD MARKS

Good condition ! But too expensive for a paperback. No other way ....i bought it for INR 682 now the price is INR 550. Looks like a gamble. Customers would only lose interest shopping on this site if Amazon continues this sort of stupidity. About the book, enjoying, very well written.Jeremy àn excellent advocate and an extradionarly defense.

It’s a great book but the seller sells a pirated one. The book which I received is looks like a pirated copy. The quality of it is very poor. I am gonna give a compliant.

Book condition could have been better

I find books of this type readable yet requiring a lot of concentration on my part due to the amount of detail provided by the authors. From reading about the trials concerning sale and publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, Fanny Hill and the trial of Christine Keeler one gets the impression of Britain in the 1950s and early 1960s as rather stifling. There is a helpful character sketch of Jeremy Hutchinson at the beginning of the book but in much of the book he plays a supporting role to the cases he's involved in; hardly surprising considering he was defending George Blake on espionage charges and Penguin Books on an obscenity charge. It's a moot point whether this book would have been better had it been written by Hutchinson himself. Reading the book will provide fascinating insights into how Britain has changed socially and provide a few doses of humour along the way. By way of comparison this book is similar in scope to Geoffrey Robertson's "The Justice Game" although Hutchinson's cases are confined to England and Wales.

This is a remarkably well written and often humorous compendium of landmark cases from the 60s and 70s that also cleverly evokes the zeitgeist and dilemmas of that era. The author, like the late Jeremy Hutchinson, is a barrister and his insights regarding the law and legal process are erudite, but, nevertheless, made accessible to the ordinary reader. The biography of Hutchinson at the beginning, while potted, is, in places, rather tedious; however, the postscript by Hutchinson, himself, at the end is excellent, although very worrying in that it reveals the extent to which our politicians are insidiously undermining the rule of law. I was so impressed overall I ordered Thomas Grant's second book, "Court Number One".

This could so easily be a 'dry' read, but it isn't. Beautifully written it gives a marvellous insight into these famous cases and brings to life a very principled, clever and likeable man in Jeremy Hutchinson. I was in my very early teen's during the time of many of these cases so the names were familiar but the details escaped me at the time. Perhaps just as well in the Profumo case! So it was doubly interesting to fill in the blanks now in my maturity. This book captures interest on many levels, as history, the workings of the law, and in Hutchinson's contribution in summing up there is a warning for the future. I had expected to dip in and out of this book but for once the description 'couldn't put it down' actually applied. Highly recommended.

Jeremy Hutchinson, now Lord Hutchinson, was one of the leading defence barristers of the 1960s and 70s, who specialised in cases that many of his fellow practitioners considered somewhat sordid and beneath their dignity. There is a long list of such famous cases and some are discussed in the book, including: ‘sex trials’, such as that of Christine Keeler (of the Profumo affair) and D.H. Lawrence’s novel ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’; spy trials such as those of George Blake; and the prosecutions of a range of anti-establishment characters like Tom Keating (the art forger) and Howard Marks (the drug dealer). Hutchinson seems to have taken delight in defending people on the fringe of society and oddballs bent on making a protest about something or other. Against the odds, he was very often successful and along the way profoundly changed the way the law, and sometime society in general, viewed things. For example, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ included numerous graphic depictions of sex using words that up until then had been considered strictly taboo. That all changed with the acquittal at the trial.The trials themselves are described in some detail by Thomas Grant in a clear elegant, sometimes witty style, with emphasis of course on the speeches of Hutchinson, but although usually described in very glowing terms (the overuse of superlatives is the only place where the quality of his writing drops) don’t really come across as such in written form. Much time is also given to how the defence was to be constructed and Hutchinson’s interactions with prosecuting councils and the judges. These are very well described and the interactions with latter are often amusing, with judges frequently exhibiting many of the worst prejudices of the time. There is genuine pleasure at an acquittal, but a win is a win to Hutchinson even if it is achieved because of a trivial drafting error in the relevant law rather than a sound logical argument. This emphasises that it seemed to be almost a great game much of the time, with the object being primarily to get one over the opposition.These cases tell us much about society in the 60s and 70s, but so does Hutchinson’s personal life, which is given in an introduction by Hutchinson himself. He was born into a privileged family and moved effortlessly in the society of leading artists writers, scientists, actors (he married Peggy Ashcroft) and of course lawyers. At one point he mentions he ‘unexpectedly’ inherited a Monet (as one does) that he sold to buy a substantial house. Nevertheless, he cannot be faulted for his commitment to defendants who were definitely not of these classes and who most people probably thought deserved what they got, for example Howard Marks, who was definitely not a’ loveable rogue’.The book ends with a personal statement by Hutchinson on the state of the law and the bar today. Not surprisingly the 100-year old peer is pessimistic, but maybe this is age talking.

It's easy to see why this book became a best seller. The subject matter is wholly enthralling and the presentation of each case, with relevant historical background, helps enormously for those to whom these events are new or to those, like me, are remembered as riveting contemporary events. I was delighted to read that Jeremy Hutchinson is going strong at 100 plus. May he continue to enjoy a long, glorious sunset!One of those books you don't want to finish.