1 Lytton Strachey in his preface to Eminent Victorians (New York: GP Putnam's and Sons, 1918).

2 That jurist being Sir David Hughes Parry QC (1893–1973). See Parry, RG ‘A master of practical law – Sir David Hughes Parry (1893–1973)’ in Watkin, TG (ed) Y Cyfraniad Cymreig: Welsh Contributions to Legal Development (Bangor: Welsh Legal History Society, 2005) pp 102–159 Google Scholar; Parry, RG ‘Federalism and university governance: Welsh experiences in New Zealand’ (2006) 23(1) Welsh History Review 123 Google Scholar; Parry, RG ‘Sir David Hughes Parry as lawyer and economist’ (2007) 13 Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 193 Google Scholar. My book on his life and career is due to be published by University of Wales Press in 2010.

3 For an impression of legal academics' awkwardness if not unease at being described as ‘legal biographers’, see the recording of a panel discussion on judicial biography held at the London School of Economics on 17 October 2007, available at http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/law/projects/legalbiog/lbp.htm.

4 Ibid.

5 See, in particular, Dahrendorf, R LSE, A History of the London School of Economics and Political Science 1895–1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also, Rawlings, R (ed) Law Society and Economy: Centenary Essays for the London School of Economics and Political Science 1985–1995 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997).Google Scholar

6 See the website available at http://womenslegalhistory.sanford.edu.

7 The legal autobiography deserves a paper in its own right. For some indication of the sheer variety of approach and emphasis, see, eg, Elwyn-Jones, Lord In My Time: An Autobiography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983)Google Scholar; Hailsham, Lord A Sparrow's Flight (London: Fontana, 1990)Google Scholar; His Honour James Pickles Judge for Yourself (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1993); Mortimer, J Murderers and Other Friends (London: Penguin, 1995)Google Scholar; Kerr, M As Far as I Remember (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2002)Google Scholar; Mansfield, M Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer (London: Bloomsbury, 2009)Google Scholar. For thoughts on autobiographical methodology, see Anderson, L Autobiography (London: Routledge, 2001).Google Scholar

8 Lacey, N A Life of HLA Hart, The Nightmare and the Noble Dream (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p xvii.Google Scholar

9 See The Oxford English Dictionary.

10 Is the solicitor's life perhaps a little too mundane to make for good bed-time reading? For observations on the solicitor in biography, see Stephen Cretney's paper, Are Solicitors' Lives Necessarily Boring?, which can be found at http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/law/projects/legalbiog/cretney.pdf.

11 Marjoribanks, E Famous Trials of Marshall Hall (London: Penguin, 1989).Google Scholar

12 Ibid, p 60.

13 Ibid, p 357.

14 Marjoribanks, E Life of Lord Carson (London: Macmillan, 1932).Google Scholar

15 Harford Montgomery Hyde (1907–1989). See his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

16 Hyde, HM Baldwin: The Unexpected Prime Minister (London: Hart-Davies, MacGibbon, 1973).Google Scholar

17 Hyde, HM Neville Chamberlain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976).Google Scholar

18 Hyde, HM Carson (London: Heinemann, 1953).Google Scholar

19 Hyde, HM Norman Birkett (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964).Google Scholar

20 Hyde, HM Sir Patrick Hastings: His Life and Cases (London: Heinemann, 1960).Google Scholar

21 Douglas Browne's biography of Travers Humphreys displays similar traits. See Sir Travers Humphreys, A Biography (London: George G Harrap, 1960).

22 See Hyde, above n 18, p 133.

23 Ibid, p 139.

24 See Carman, D No Ordinary Man: A Life of George Carman (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2002).Google Scholar

25 See Lord, G John Mortimer, The Devil's Advocate (London: Orion, 2005).Google Scholar

26 Lloyd George began his career as a solicitor practising in the small towns of Porthmadog and Criccieth in North Wales before being elected to parliament in the election of 1892. Although a renowned and busy lawyer prior to his election, the success of his political career would mean that he would have little time for legal practice in later life. For interesting assessments of his early life and his career as a country solicitor, see Grigg, J The Young Lloyd George (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973)Google Scholar; also Price, E David Lloyd George (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006).Google Scholar

27 Jackson, S Rufus Isaacs, First Marquess of Reading (London: Cassell & Co, 1936).Google Scholar

28 Ibid, pp 197–209.

29 Campbell, J Smith, FE, First Earl of Birkenhead (London: Pimlico, 1991).Google Scholar

30 Ibid, pp 548–585.

31 See Lewis, G Lord Atkin (Oxford: Hart, 1999).Google Scholar

32 Lewis, G Carson, the Man who divided Ireland (London: Hambledon, 2005).Google Scholar

33 Lewis, G Lord Hailsham: A Life (London: Pimlico, 1998).Google Scholar

34 See Davies, S Empiricism and History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003) pp 43–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 See Lichtman, A and French, V Historians and the Living Past: The Theory and Practice of Historical Study (Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1978) p 182.Google Scholar

36 Oral evidence has potential problems related to accuracy and revisionism, and there are biographers who avoid this potential source. See, eg, Anthony Howard, who, in his biography of RA Butler, commented that ‘there is no more flawed source for recalling the events of yesterday than human recollection’; Howard, A RAB, The Life of RA Butler (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987) p xiv.Google Scholar

37 Ibbetson, D Historical research in law’ in Cane, P and Tushnet, M (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) pp 863–879.Google Scholar

38 Ibid, p 878.

39 For an interesting lawyers' perspective on empirical research, see Baldwin, J and Davis, G Empirical research in law’ in Cane, P and Tushnet, M (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) pp 880–900.Google Scholar

40 See Glendinning, V Lies and silences’ in Homberger, E and Charmley, J (eds) The Troubled Face of Biography (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1988) pp 49–62 at p 51.Google Scholar

41 See Mandelbaum, M A note on history as narrative’ in Roberts, G (ed) The History and Narrative Reader (London: Routledge, 2001) pp 52–58, at p 56.Google Scholar

42 See R Blake ‘The art of biography’ in Homberger and Charmley, above n 40, pp 75–93, at p 77.

43 Ibid, p 87.

44 See Gaddis, JL The Landscape of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p 114.Google Scholar

45 See Blake, above n 42, p 76.

46 For further reflections see M Seymour ‘Shaping the truth’ in Seymour, M ‘Shaping the truth’ in France, P and St Clair, W (eds) Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) pp 253–266.Google Scholar

47 This also raises the subject of the difficult relationship between ‘facts’ and ‘objective truth’. A postmodernist critique of history claims that objective or ‘truthful’ history is impossible, and that all history is a subjective, human product, a biased reconstruction, something that can only be appreciated in the same way as a literary text, such as a novel. The role of the imagination in the activity of historical representation is one which has been the subject of a great deal of writing on historiography. See, eg, Thompson, W Postmodernism and History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, H The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Wood, EM and Foster, JB (eds) In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997).Google Scholar

48 See R Skidelsky ‘Only connect: biography and truth’ in Homberger and Charmley, above n 40, pp 1–16 at p 9.

49 See Blake, above n 42, p 90.

50 See Jordanova, L History in Practice (London: Arnold Publishing, 2000) at p 41.Google Scholar

51 The advantages and disadvantages with the chronological structure are considered by Kinkead-Weekes, Mark Writing lives forwards: a case for strictly chronological biography’ in France, P and St Clair, W (eds) Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) at pp 235–252.Google Scholar

52 A point noted by Simpson, Awb Herbert Hart Elucidated’ (2006) 104 Michigan Law Review 1437 at 1437.Google Scholar

53 Frederic William Maitland's career and contribution to English legal history is well documented. See, eg, Bell, HE Maitland: A Critical Examination and Assessment (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1965)Google Scholar; Cameron, JR Frederick William Maitland and the History of English Law (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Delany, Vth The Frederic William Maitland Reader (New York: Oceana Publications, 1957).Google Scholar

54 Fifoot, Chs Frederic William Maitland: A Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Elton, GR FW Maitland (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985).Google Scholar

56 See, eg, Feaver, G From Status to Contract: A Biography of Sir Henry Maine 1822–1888 (London: Longmans, 1969)Google Scholar, which is a collection of essays discussing Maine's ideas.

57 See Diamond, A (ed) The Victorian Achievement of Sir Henry Maine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 See Twining, W Karl Llewellyn and the Realist Movement (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973)Google Scholar.

59 Duxbury, N Frederick Pollock and the English Juristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 See Duxbury, N Lord Wright and innovative traditionalism’ (2009) 59(3) University of Toronto Law Journal 265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 An example of a recently published biography of an English judge is Lentin, A The Last Political Law Lord: Lord Sumner (1859–1934) (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008).Google Scholar

62 Heward, E Lord Denning, A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991).Google Scholar

63 Freeman, I Lord Denning, A Life (London: Hutchinson, 1993).Google Scholar

64 For an interesting assessment of the tradition of judicial biography, see Girard, P Judging lives: judging biography from Hale to Holmes’ (2003) 7 Australian Journal of Legal History 87 Google Scholar.

65 Tosh, J The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (Harlow: Longman, 1984) p 72.Google Scholar

66 See Glendinning, above n 40, p 60.

67 See Skidelsky, above n 48, pp 11–14.

68 See Mandelbaum, above n 41, p 56.

69 See Skidelsky, above n 48, p 15.

70 See Blake, above n 42, pp 89–90.

71 Beatson, J and Zimmermann, R (eds) Jurists Uprooted: German-Speaking Émigré Lawyers in Twentieth Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72 Studies of classical jurists are often intellectual in approach. See, eg, Cromartie, A Sir Mathew Hale 1609–1676: Law, Religion and Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Toomer, GJ John Selden: A Life in Scholarship, Volumes I and II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).Google Scholar

73 The definition of ‘legal history’ was the subject of extensive discussion in an edited volume in the Current Legal Issues series. See Lewis, A and Lobban, M (eds) ‘Law and history’ (2003) 6 Current Legal Issues.Google Scholar

74 See D Ibbetson ‘What is legal history a history of?’ in Lewis and Lobban, ibid, at 33–40; see also Ibbetson, above n 37, pp 863–879.

75 See Ibbetson, above n 37, p 864.

76 Twining, W Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1994) p 123.Google Scholar

77 See Ibbetson, above n 37, p 864.

78 Ibid, p 867.

79 Ibid, pp 873–874.

80 Much has been written on the struggle to establish law as a university subject and on the appropriate role and contribution of legal scholars in the development of the law. See Gower, Lcb ‘English legal training’ (1950) 13 MLR 137 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sugarman, D ‘Legal theory, the common law mind and the making of the textbook tradition’ in Twining, W (ed) Legal Theory and Common Law (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) pp 26–61 Google Scholar; Twining, above n 76; Fletcher, I ‘An English tragedy: the academic lawyer as jurist’ in Charles Edwards, TM, Owen, ME and Walters, DB (eds) Lawyers and Laymen (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1986) pp 316–335 Google Scholar; JH Baker ‘The Inns of Court and legal doctrine’ in Charles Edwards, Owen and Walters, ibid, pp 274–286; Hanbury, HG The Vinerian Chair and Legal Education (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958)Google Scholar; Lawson, FH The Oxford Law School 1850–1965 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968)Google Scholar; Duxbury, N Jurists and Judges: An Essay on Influence (Oxford: Hart, 2001)Google Scholar; Duxbury, N ‘A century of legal studies’ in Cane, P and Tushnet, M (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) pp 950–974 Google Scholar; Glasser, C ‘Radicals and refugees: the foundation of the modern law review and English legal scholarship’ (1987) 50 MLR 688 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abel-Smith, B and Stevens, R Lawyers and the Courts: A Sociological Study of the English Legal System 1750–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1967)Google Scholar; Twining, W ‘1836 and all that: laws in the University of London, 1836–1986’ (1987) 40 Current Legal Problems 261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

81 See Bridge, JW ‘The academic lawyer: mere working mason or architect?’ (1975) 91 LQR 488 at 489Google Scholar; See also Birks, P ‘The academic and the practitioner’ (1998) 18(4) LS 397.Google Scholar

82 For reflections on the present preoccupations of legal scholars, see Cownie, F Legal Academics: Culture and Identities (Oxford: Hart, 2004)Google Scholar and Bradney, A Conversations, Choices and Changes: The Liberal Law School in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Hart, 2003).Google Scholar

83 See R Holmes ‘The proper study’ in France and St Clair, above n 46, p 7.

84 See Skidelsky, above n 48, p 2.

85 Ibid, pp 4–5.

86 Nicolson, H The Development of English Biography (London: Hogarth Press, 1933) p 139.Google Scholar

87 For an account of Strachey's life and career see Holroyd, M Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography (London: Heinemann, 1968).Google Scholar

88 See further Whittemore, R Whole Lives: Shapers of Modern Biography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) pp 11–46.Google Scholar

89 See Sidelsky, above n 48, p 2.

90 See Burke, P History of events and the revival of narrative’ in Burke, P (ed) New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) pp 233–248.Google Scholar

91 See Skidelsky, above n 48, p 6.

92 Gittings, R The Nature of Biography (London: Heindemann, 1978) pp 41–52.Google Scholar

93 See Whittemore, above n 88, pp 79–116.

94 See Edel, L Biography and the science of man’ in Friedson, AM New Directions in Biography (Manoa: University of Hawaii, 1981) pp 1–12.Google Scholar

95 The personality and nature of ‘legal’ scholarship is considered by Twining, above n 76.

96 See Tosh, above n 65, p 73.

97 See Freeman, above n 63, p 59.

98 For a similar analysis of the First World War's impact on character development, see Thorpe, DR Eden: The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon, 1897–1977 (London: Pimlico, 2004) pp 3–9.Google Scholar

99 See Dukes, R ‘Otto Kahn Freund and collective laissez-faire: an edifice without a keystone?’ (2009) 72(2) MLR 220 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Dukes, R ‘Constitutionalizing employment relations; Sinzheimer, Kahn-Freund, and the role of labour law’ (2008) 35(3) Journal of Law and Society 341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100 For an overview of Kahn-Freund's career, see M Freedland ‘Otto Kahn-Freund (1900–1979)’ in Beatson and Zimmermann, above n 71, pp 299–324.

101 See Lacey, above n 8.

102 See Simpson, above n 52, at 1449.

103 See Lacey, above n 8, pp 328–337.

104 Ibid, pp 155–178.

105 For interesting reviews see Schlegel, JH in (2006) 24(3) Law and History Review 679 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Culver, K Review essay: Hla Hart: a life in the perspective of law and philosophy’ (2005) 43 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 451 Google Scholar.

106 Lacey, above n 8, p 363.

107 See H Brogan ‘The biographer's chains’ in Homberger and Charmley, above n 40, pp 104–112 at p 111.

108 See Fenster, M The folklore of legal biography’ (2007) 105 Michigan Law Review 1265 at 1280Google Scholar.

109 See KO Morgan ‘Writing political biography’ in Homberger and Charmley, above n 40, p 33.

110 See Gittings, above n 92, p 14.

111 See Blake, above n 42, p 81.

112 See Homberger and Charmley, above n 40, p xi.

113 See Brogan, above n 107, p 111.

114 See H Spurling ‘Neither morbid nor ordinary’ in Homberger and Charmley, above n 40, p 121.

115 See Homberger and Charmley, ibid.