Old jokes
Sir: Nicholas Farrell reports (The LCJ says a few words', 12 July) that the Lord Chief Justice after his speech to a dinner of solici- tors, barristers and stipendiary magistrates sat down to no better than 'modest applause' after telling what seem to have been pretty harmless jokes about race and sex. May this reaction have been due not to politically correct feelings but to the fact that the anecdotes about Mr Justice Stevenson (retired 1979, died 1987), Judge Duveen (did both in 1973) and King Farouk (expired 1965) have been well known to generations of lawyers? They have gone round and round every office and chambers. If Lord Bingham erred, it was surely in recycling ancient stories, a certain way to bore a large audience with a limited attention span. If I am wrong, then there are indeed even more pompous twits among criminal practitioners than I had thought.
Michael Davies
Third Floor South, 6 Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2
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