Obiter was heartened to learn of the faith that attorney general, Dominic Grieve QC (pictured), has in the jury system, forged with the help of a cantankerous Old Bailey judge. Delivering the annual Kalisher lecture in memory of criminal barrister Michael Kalisher QC last week, Grieve recalled the first time he defended a Crown court trial, just after completing pupillage.

The young barrister was representing an 18-year-old woman of good character, charged with ‘furious driving with intent to cause actual bodily harm’, contrary to section 35 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. ‘An offence which I have never encountered since, save that I think it was the basis of the case against Toad in Wind in the Willows,’ he quipped.

The judge, it seems, had taken a particular view of the case, and remanded the defendant in Holloway prison for the night after deciding that she had raised a point in her evidence that amounted to an alibi, of which no previous notice had been given. Over a glass of sherry, the judge explained to Grieve that the overnight remand might avoid the necessity for an immediate custodial sentence, if the defendant saw sense and pleaded guilty. The government’s most senior law officer recalled that after the judge’s summing up the next day, ‘in a tone appropriate to his strong views on the case’, the jury acquitted the woman in 10 minutes. ‘My confidence in the jury system and my resolve to uphold it in politics has been entirely secure since then,’ said Grieve.