FAMOUS ADVOCATE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 117, 20 May 1939, Page 20

FAMOUS ADVOCATE

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

Sir Edward Clarke was by common consent the foremost British advocate of Victorian and Edwardian times and one of the greatest of all time. His period of active practice at the Bar spanned two generations, and his professional career brought him into contact with all sorts and conditions of men and women at moments of crisis and peril in their lives. The barristerauthors of his official biography, Messrs. Derek Walker-Smith and Edward Clarke, his grandsori,; have had full access to all Sir Edward 'Clarke's private papers and have new light to throw on the Oscar Wilde tnsal, the Tranby Croft Baccarat case, in which Edward VII, as Prince of Wales, gave evidence, the Staunton case, the Detectives case, which led to the formation of the C.1.D., the trials of Adelaide Bartlett and Esther Pay for murder, the Jameson Raid case, ,and many strange and exciting episodes, including the London misadventures of a Continental prince and a suppressed society scandal that menaced the Throne itself.

Letters appear, not merely from Sir William Gordon Cumming and other notable clients, but also from the great statesmen and lawyers of the day, among them Lord Salisbury, Lord Curzon, Mr. Asquith and Lord Alverstorie, while many of Sir Edward Clarke's own letters on matters legal, political, and personal, are reproduced. The book, which is published by Messrs. Thornton Butterworth, does not treat of Edward Clarke only as the great advocate. It shows him as the ambitious boy, who from humble beginnings achieved a great political career; as a devoted Churchman; as an active Freemason and a keen sportsman, and, above all, as a man with a keen interest in life, whose rich experience gave him that insight into the lives of others, indispensable to the makings of a great advocate.