Lawyer Heal Thyself

Some books arrive with reputations. Others arrive with a faint smell of pipe smoke, a slightly leaning spine, and the unmistakable air of a man who once said “My learned friend…” before ordering a third whisky at lunch. Lawyer Heal Thyself by Lawyer, Heal Thyself! is very much in the second category.

Published in 1959 by Victor Gollancz, and presented here in a handsome third impression complete with a remarkably well-preserved dust jacket, this is the sort of novel that seems to belong permanently to a rain-darkened London afternoon. Barristers drift through chambers, telephones ring with restrained menace, and everyone appears to know at least three people who ought probably not to be left alone with a divorce petition. The title itself sounds less like a book and more like something muttered by a disappointed senior partner shortly before collapsing into an armchair. (Google Books)

Bill Mortlock — himself a solicitor, because naturally he was — clearly knew the legal world well enough to satirise it properly. The result is one of those wonderfully mid-century British novels where the characters are simultaneously respectable and catastrophically human. Somewhere between courtroom drama, social comedy and low-grade emotional collapse, the book wanders cheerfully through the legal profession’s polished veneer while quietly pointing out that the people dispensing wisdom to others are often the very last people who should be trusted with their own lives.

And honestly, what a marvellous period object this edition is. The dust jacket has survived with admirable dignity, which is more than can be said for most lawyers or indeed most 1959 dust jackets. The spine is slightly slanted, as shown in the photographs, but in fairness many books from this era lean a little after decades spent standing shoulder-to-shoulder in overstuffed bookcases absorbing nicotine, central heating, and the accumulated disappointment of the British middle classes. It feels less like damage and more like character development.

There is also something deeply comforting about old legal fiction from this period. Nobody “lawyers up”. Nobody storms dramatically from the courtroom while orchestral music swells. Instead, people worry quietly, drink steadily, and destroy each other with carefully phrased letters typed on heavy paper. It is civilisation at its most passive-aggressive.

A splendid copy for readers who enjoy vintage British fiction, legal satire, or simply books that look as though they ought to live beside a green-shaded lamp in a slightly dusty study. Equally suitable for actual lawyers, retired solicitors, collectors of Gollancz editions, or anyone who enjoys the idea of a novel in which emotional repression is treated as both a lifestyle and a professional qualification.

Crappy Old Books: rescuing slightly crooked survivors from the long slow collapse of the twentieth century.

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