Publisher Review

“Can a person who has achieved so much really be so down-to-earth and so utterly lacking in pomposity? In this entertaining memoir Lord Brown proves one can. Rarely has a legal autobiography revealed such a charming and self-deprecating character. Lord Brown has written an unstuffy and brisk account of his life from cradle to vigorous old age. It bristles with anecdote, good humour and vividly drawn vignettes of the gallimaufry of legal personalities he encountered.”
– Thomas Grant, The Times, reviewing Playing Off the Roof

Exuberantly revisiting his early years in National Service, at Oxford and as a young barrister, Simon Brown regales us with anecdotes from his time at the Bar and on the bench, with stories of Paddington Bear, Nigel Lawson and Mozart at the Warsaw opera. He considers such thorny problems as the 2019 prorogation judgement and whether trial by jury might be dispensed with to clear the mounting backlog of criminal cases. He finds time to muse on when a judge might choose to change a sentence already imposed, what to say after dinner, and how the game of golf is strictly for the birds!