To anyone who was personally concerned in any capacity with the law of England between the two World Wars, and to anyone who is interested in the history and development of English law, this book is fascinating reading.

In some ways it is a pity that we have had to wait so long for a life of Lord Atkin to be written. He died in 1944 at the age of 77. It has made Mr Geoffrey Lewis’s task of authorship more difficult because the lapse of 40 years since Lord Atkin’s death inevitably means that Mr Lewis had available to him fewer personal memories of the man and his work. Lord Atkin was a firm adherent to the old tradition of members of the judiciary never to court publicity for themselves or their views. Hence, over much of his field, outside the arid pastures of the law reports, Mr Lewis has had to rely on the personal recollections of the sadly diminished numbers of those who knew Lord Atkin or had seen him in action as a judge.

On the other hand, the lapse of years in the publication of a biography of this great lawyer and judge has had one substantial countervailing advantage. It has meant that Geoffrey Lewis has undertaken the responsibility of authorship. It is hard to think of anyone who might have undertaken the task in earlier years who would have discharged it so well. The book has been written, without adulation, but with sympathy and with understanding of the social and legal background, giving an admirably fair and clear picture of the man and of the judge; the judge who made a remarkable and lasting contribution to the development of the law.

Lord Atkin would surely have been pleased, also, that the author, who has gone to so much trouble to seek out and to sift and organize the material, should himself be a partner in the firm of solicitors whose founder gave the young and newly-called Richard Atkin his first brief in 1891: a brief which, as Lord Atkin records in his own notes of his early career, which are included as an appendix to the book, was “a case for opinion, with a sovereign, a shilling and a half-crown for the clerk … It was one of the most difficult cases I ever had to advise upon in my whole career”.

The book consists of nine chapters, with six appendices. The first chapter gives the story of Atkin’s life. It contains a personal memoir written by his daughter, Mrs Elizabeth Robson, which gives a vivid and touching impression of his happy family life. That chapter, with two of the appendices, presents the picture of Atkin, the man. The essential attributes—the legal stature—of Atkin, the judge, emerge from the other chapters, which also, of course, incidentally shed light on the qualities of Atkin, the man. Those other chapters deal, separately, with various facets of his legal career. The most interesting and important of them are, perhaps, those which are entitled “Liberal Philosophy” (though, as is made clear, Atkin had no political allegiance), “Donoghue v. Stevenson”, “Commercial Law” and “Liversidge v. Anderson”.