Minis were washed on Sunday mornings inside their lean-to garages, bright dahlias and tea roses grew in their front gardens, their doorbells chimed and, on winter evenings, lights glowed from the stained-glass portholes in their front doors. There are no sadder relics of the past than the rows of small, semi-detached houses that line one of the western approaches to London. Such occasions have been rare, but like number thirteen buses, two of them turned up in short order round a Christmas which I remember as being one of the oddest, but certainly the most rewarding, I ever spent. There have been times, however, when recognizing a face seen in trouble has greatly assisted me in the solution of some legal problem, and carried me to triumph in a difficult case.

Reminiscences of the past are best avoided and what is required is a quick look and a quiet turn away. Days in Court probably represent a period of time they’d rather forget and, as a rule, I’m not especially keen to renew an old acquaintance when a face I once saw in the Old Bailey Dock reappears at a ‘Scales of Justice’ dinner or the Inns of Court garden party. If they catch a glimpse of you on the Underground, or across a crowded wine bar, they will bury their faces in their newspapers or look studiously in the opposite direction. Even if you’ve steered them through the rocks of the prosecution case and brought them out to the calm waters of a not-guilty verdict, they won’t plan further meetings, host reunion dinners or even send you a card on your birthday. Your ex-customers will never want to see you again. In the varied ups and downs, the thrills and spills in the life of an Old Bailey hack, one thing stands as stone. Here are three samples of these entertaining stories. Rumpole and the Remembrance of Things Past Here are seven fresh and funny stories in which he triumphs over the forces of prejudice and mean-mindedness while he tiptoes precariously through the domestic territory of his wife Hilda - She Who Must Be Obeyed. Horace Rumpole - a defending lawyer never claimed he knew all the law, but he did know how to keep his clients out of prison.

John mortimer rumpole