Expensive dog bites many
Ian Hislop
MEMOIRS OF A LIBEL LAWYER by Peter Carter-Ruck
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f20, pp. 293
t one point Carter-Ruck describes an
A
old libel action in which he represented Randolph Churchill against Gerald Nabar- ro. Nabarro refused to communicate directly with Churchill and instructed him to talk to his solicitors, instead saying: 'I do not buy expensive dogs and bark myself.' Expensive Dog would have been a more entertaining title for this collection of Peter Carter-Ruck's barkings made over the years on behalf of people whose grievances and even whose names have often faded from public memory. Carter-Ruck says that his memoirs recall `the excitements, the responsibilities, the exigencies, the personalities and the behind-the-scenes events which are part of so many High Court libel actions'. Those who do not share a lawyer's idea of excitement might find the details of the litigation involving Dog World or The Confectionery News and Ice Cream and Soda Fountain Journal rather disappoint- ing. Even in cases involving the famous, Carter-Ruck is so constrained by his desire to please all his former clients that there is not a hint of a revelation in the whole volume. The back-stage insight remains at this level: Those who read the reports in the newspap- ers are not aware of the strain upon the solicitor nor that most solicitors have to return to their offices during the luncheon adjournment.
When journalists read a particularly dull piece about a potentially interesting sub' ject they tend to conclude that it has been lawyered', i.e. that everything of interest has been removed for legal reasons. This is a whole book that has been `lawyered' by its author and the result is that all Carter- Ruck's clients are praised extravagantly and so are all the solicitors, barristers and judges he has ever come across. There is an exception to this tone of remorseless back- slapping when Carter-Ruck says that `In only one case has a losing client been spiteful and ungrateful'. This is a reference to Derek Jameson who sued the BBC over a sketch about him on Radio Four's Weekending and lost disastrously. Perhaps he should now sue Carter-Ruck for calling him 'spiteful and ungrateful'. It would be no more feeble an action than most of those detailed in the book and it seems a bit much that Carter-Ruck, after a heavy defeat, should demand gratitude as well as his large fee, What Carter-Ruck does not say about the case is that like most libel actions it made the libel much more Prominent than the original broadcast. The phrase 'East End boy made bad' and the joke about Jameson thinking erudite was a type of glue are now part of the common culture. Jameson has forgiven the BBC but Carter-Ruck clearly has not, and the book is peppered with bitter attacks on the BBC, including an extraordinary one criticising them for devoting too many resources to winning the Weekending case. Apart from the very famous Derek Jameson, Carter-Ruck's career includes encounters with Harold Wilson, Bessie Braddock, Richard Crossman, Odette of the French Resistance, Lord Beaverbrook, James Goldsmith, Lady Docker, Cecil Parkinson and Ian Fleming. Yet he has surprisingly little of interest to say about any of them. A literary style consisting of exaggerated adulation of the client, ex- aggerated moral outrage at the opponent and exaggerated satisfaction with self may be perfect for composing libel writs but it makes for rather dull reading. I am afraid Peter Carter-Ruck is not going to carve himself a niche in history on the basis of these memoirs. I suspect that he is going to be remembered for two things, neither of which is in this book. One is his part in introducing the phrase Ugandan discussions' into the language, by acting for Princess Bagaya of Toro, a Ugandan princess whom General Amin falsely accused of having sex in a toilet with a European diplomat at Orly airport. The other is for having a name which rhymes with what most editors say when they get a letter from him. The reason they do this, I must point out, is not because he is so much more fearsome a libel lawyer than all the others. It is because he is, to rephrase Nabarro, a more expensive dog and if the action is lost then paying his costs will Probably be more crippling than paying any damages awarded. It does seem entire- ly appropriate that his memoirs should cost a staggering £20.
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