BENCHMARKBy Sir Oliver PopplewellI.B.

Taurus, 19.00Jeremy Fleming

This is a pleasant enough ramble through the life of a High Court judge, if that's your idea of a good ramble.

Certainly Sir Oliver Popplewell has had an interesting life - a spiffing time at Charterhouse School with many other Old Carthusians who went on to achieve great things; time as a secretary in the Navy for national service (just as the Second World War ended); a first-class record at Cambridge where he studied law and won a cricket Blue ('They were indeed our salad days'), followed by a distinguished career at the bar culminating in a 16-year stint as a high court judge.

The most interesting revelations for lawyers come in Sir Oliver's comments about the trial of Jonathan 'trusty sword of truth' Aitken.

Especially his statement that he was already convinced that Aitken was telling porky pies before the Guardian's legal team found the plane ticket verifying that Aitken's wife was not where he said she was when he said she was.

Sir Oliver seems to have a long memory and is clearly not a man to suffer fools and others who get in the way of his family's success.

Of a hapless academic who refused his barrister son, Andrew, a place at Cambridge, he says: 'We often wonder what happened to the admissions tutor, and whether his failure to spot a first-class candidate had the slightest effect on his subsequent career.

Sadly, I doubt it.'

Of another admissions tutor who refused his son, Eddie Jim, a place at Cambridge: 'It was a most shattering blow and one for which we have never really forgiven the college.'

His daughter-in-law ended her career in medicine because of consultants who were 'plainly jealous of her abilities'.

Apart from these excruciating insights into the mind of a strenuously academic and unforgiving father, this book is interesting.

But the editor who allowed Sir Oliver to use the infuriating legalistic formulation 'in the result' countless times in his book should be added to Sir Oliver's list of unforgiven.