The Age of Rumpole Is Past? Legal History on British Television

The Age of Rumpole Is Past? Legal History on British Television

On the release in 2016 of Sally Smith QC’s biography of Sir Edward Marshall Hall called A Law Unto Himself, members of the English bar were seen reading well-thumbed copies of this life of the famous Edwardian barrister. Smith’s biography is not the first time Marshall Hall has risen (figuratively) from the dead. In 1989, his life and courtroom theatrics were brought back to life in the television series Shadow of the Noose. Why however would his life be of appeal and interest to his modern successors and what is learnt from the dramatisation of the legal past, notably the courtroom action? Visions of legal history made in modern television are eclectic, including Garrow’s Law, Poldark, Shadow of the Noose, and Inspector Morse (specifically the episode 'The Wench is Dead'). Even programmes that, at the time of their production were set in the present day, now seem products of an earlier and vanished age such as Rumpole of the Bailey and Everyman’s recreation of the Gay News blasphemous libel trial. Nostalgia can and should be critiqued, but its emergence in television, in biography and in the hands of members of the legal professional also merits interpretation. In an era when the UK Ministry of Justice is criticised by the Bar Council for 'airbrushing' the barrister out of history, and a more general lament that the age of the characterful advocate is past, this chapter considers the range, meaning, impact and potency of a legal history evoked by popular culture.

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