Wig Begone

Charles Courtley, a newly qualified lawyer without a penny to his name, plunges into the archaic world of the Bar as it was thirty-five years ago.

After a stroke of beginners’ luck – and a taste of good living – he soon becomes established in practice battling away in the criminal courts, conducting court-martials in Germany and on one horrifying occasion actually appearing in a commercial court, “winding up ” companies of which he knows nothing!

He encounters a wide range of clients including an Italian motorist charged with assault, who claims to have been savagely attacked by an elderly lollipop man wielding his road sign.

On top of that, there are instructing solicitors who never pay him and even one who has departed this world altogether yet still manages to operate on a shadowy basis from the vicinity of Bow Road in East London.

Court-martials take Charles abroad where he encounters a German policeman’s dog whose canine expertise is deemed to be perfectly sound evidence and samples a night out on the other side of the infamous Berlin wall just making it back to the safety of the West.

Wig Begone is an exhilarating tale of Charles’ early career with disaster often lurking round the corner and culminating in his own appearance in front of England’s most notorious judge!

A note from the author:

The law provides enormous scope for the recounting of funny stories – just think of AP Herbert’s “Misleading Cases”, Henry Cecil’s “Brothers-In-Law” and John Mortimer’s “Rumpole of the Bailey”. Which is why I have written “Wig Begone” – the fictional biography, humorously told, of a young Barrister’s early career.

Described in one review as “looking back wryly to the good old days before political correctness invaded our lives”, my book is nostalgic too, remembering my own early days at the criminal bar in the 1970’s.

You can read an extract from Wig Begone below: