Benchmark: a life in the law

Sir Oliver Popplewella's career goes a long way to explode myths and to show what judges are really like: impartial, skilled in the law, above party politics certainly, but essentially human.

He was certainly born into a comfortable middle-class family, but his upbringing was (to quote from Stephen Frya's Foreword to this book) "more Betjeman Metroland than Wodehouse Mayfaira".

Sir Oliver was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple and a successful career at the junior bar and on the Oxford and Midland Circuit culminated in his becoming a QC and his subsequent elevation to the High Court Bench.

Various high profile cases followed involving public figures - Jonathan Aitken, Lawrence Dallaglio, the England rugby captain, or the sprinter Linford Christie in Christie v McVicar, the editor of Spike magazine - and the public enquiry into the tragic fire at the Bradford City football ground.

This autobiography is an absorbing portrait of the career of one of England's most distinguished lawyers, recounted in a witty, intelligent and effortlessly engaging style.