THE 1980s Nick Phillips took silk in 1978, followed by Roger Buckley in 1979 and John Phillips and Nick Lyell in 1980. At last 1 Brick Court had a reasonable number of commercial silks. From his early days when Nick Phillips devilled for Bob Alexander, through the days when they did county court and matrimonial work, Bob would often lead Nick before the latter took silk and they were close friends. Nick was the better lawyer, but Bob’s skills as an advocate were unrivalled. One such case was The Diana Prosperity83 which went to the House of Lords on the question whether the vessel referred to in a charterparty as “Hull 354 to be built in Osaka” failed to comply with its description because in fact it was (irrelevantly) built at Oshima and was denominated Hull 304. So too Evans Marshall v Bertola, a case about the importation of Spanish sherry which went to the House of Lords.84 When at the trial their Spanish law expert was asked how he distinguished a case of the Spanish Supreme Court which said precisely the opposite to his evidence, the expert’s simple answer was “That was a case about sheep, this is a case about sherry.” Sydney Kentridge and his wife Felicia had worked tirelessly in South Africa to do what they could within the confines of the partisan legal system to undermine the apartheid regime. Sydney had been junior counsel to Nelson Mandela in his trial in the late 1950s. In Mandela’s autobiography85 he recounts an occasion when during the trial Sydney started the day’s proceedings with a complaint about the prison food which led to the judge sampling it himself (and with the benefit of the prison authorities putting in extra beans and gravy, declaring it well cooked and tasty). It is easy to imagine that, even at a relatively young age, the wily Sydney recognising in view of the way things were going, a diversion was needed. He also represented Steve Biko’s family at the 1978 inquest into his death in police custody when his devastating cross-examination of the police officers meant that the whitewash 83 [1976] 1WLR 989 84 [1973] 1WLR 349 CA, (No 2) [1976] 2 Lloyd’s Rep 17 HL 85 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1995) Abacus p232
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