THE FIRST LORD BIRKENHEAD should like to protest against the
references to my father in the article called 'Law Reform' in your issue of January 10. I feel that these comments could scarcely have been more unhappily or more ignorantly expressed. The impression is left that the late Lord Birkenhead had got a Second at Oxford and nothing more. May 1 point out, since this para- graph dealt with my father's handling of the Law of Properties Act of 1925, that his Law record at Oxford was as follows :
Not onlly did he take a First class in ,Jurispru- dence, but he followed that up by winning the Blue Riband of Oxford Law, the Vinerian Law Scholar- ship, and in so doing -defeated Professor W. S. Holdsworth, undoubtedly the greatest English jurist since Dicey and Anson and author of the monu- mental History of English Law in nine volumes. Furthermore, I would like to point out that Pro- fessor Holdsworth dedicated his book to my father.
I think you will agree that it is both 'cavalier and ignorant to write, as you do, 'We would never have got English property law down to the two basic con- ceptions of freehold and leasehold if one of our Lord Chancellors had not got a Second at Oxford.'
24 Wilton Street, SW I [We are sorry that, in referring to the beneficent role played by,the first Lord Birkenhead in the reform of the Law of Property, we mentioned only his initial 'Second' at Oxford, and not his subsequent academic triumphs.—Editor, Spectator.]
Previous page
