Spouse gone AWOL? Then ask a law librarian. That was the instinct of the solicitor who called the Law Society library to say his client wanted a divorce, but had no marriage certificate and could not remember the exact date of the marriage or precisely where it took place (‘somewhere in Bangkok’). He also had no idea where his wife actually was and so couldn’t ask her. What should he do?

At least that query was current, unlike the client who enquired whether she could be related to Mary Magdalene – last known address, the Holy Land, 2,000 years ago. It was something to do with an inheritance.

And then there was the 1907 contract, the terms of which would expire only when the last relative of Queen Victoria alive at that time had been dead 21 years. Who would that be, the caller enquired. The answer, of course, was Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Alice, who was born in 1883 and died in 1981. The contract ran out in 2002.

Obiter is confident other librarians can cap these examples of legal enquiries beyond the call of duty.