I understand that his strength as an advocate lay not in his powers of oratory, but in the reasoning and persuasiveness of the arguments by which he tried to bring the court round to his point of view. He continued to use his powers of persuasion when he was sitting as a Lord of Appeal and would come home and say that he thought that he had won his ‘brothers’ over to his side or ‘so-and-so is still not convinced but I think he may be tomorrow.’ He certainly persuaded his family that he was right. When he gave us the facts of a case and asked us what we thought about it, his way of presenting the problem was such that there was never any suggestion in our minds that the other side could have a leg to stand on.

Might it be suggested that the central act of the legal mind, of judge and lawyer alike, is the conversion of the raw material of life … into a story that will claim to tell the truth in legal terms?