Even the greats can learn lessons from their heroes, as Geoffrey Bindman explains
The late Lord Bingham is rightly revered as the greatest judge of our generation. Less well known than his judicial achievements is his own reverence for another great figure: Dr Samuel Johnson. Asked what book he would take to his mythical desert island, Bingham chose Boswell’s Life of Johnson, remarking that “it contained all of life”.
Johnson was, of course, the great lexicographer, composer of a celebrated dictionary of the English language, author of Lives of the Poets and of many important works of poetry and prose. He was not a lawyer, but he regretted that he had not made it his profession. When Boswell asked him why he had not done so, he replied with his customary directness: "Because, Sir, I had not money to study law”.
Nevertheless, he maintained a great interest in the law throughout his life. He accumulated a considerable law library. Boswell, in his younger days a Scottish advocate. but later an English barrister and recorder of Carlisle, sought Johnson’s advice on several of
