Tom Cunliffe Soul Starter

Another bump and the whole ship shuddered. It was now or never....

The days when I studied the law of the land seem centuries ago now, yet many an incident from my time in Arcady is as clear in my mind as trundling out the bins this morning. One of my lecturers was a senior barrister with a gloriously double-barrelled name. He dressed immaculately in the uniform known in the trade as ‘black and stripes’ - a black jacket and waistcoat with watch-chain, striped formal trousers, a stiff collar and a perfectly knotted silver-grey tie. Never short of an opinion on the decisions of judges, he boldly announced one morning in 1966 that, ‘The Court of Criminal Appeal, like the Times Newspaper, is not what it was.’ Goodness knows what shortfall in the justice dispensed by that learned tribunal caused the outburst, but there’s no doubting that The Times changed its front-page format that very morning from small advertisement columns to a conventional headline-and-story layout.

Publishing progress was undoubtedly made, but it led to a wave of nostalgia for a more colourful age when, instead of being greeted over breakfast with ‘Bishop in boarding house affair with actress during synod’, one could choose between ‘1930 RollsRoyce, titled lady owner, well serviced, POA’, and ‘Elderly but able yachtsman seeks willing lady crew ready for anything. Send colour photo’.