ABSTRACT
At that time divorce was not practised in the Family Division of the High Court, which was a later invention, but in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division where ‘Wills, Wives and Wrecks’ were famously collected together, in both the business of the High Court and the novels of A P Herbert, and is one explanation for the fact that 60 years or more ago ‘Family Law’ as such barely existed since it consisted almost entirely of divorce and some small provision for child protection, and in the latter case mostly owing to the theoretical basis of protection from ‘cruelty’ to children. At this time the late Sir John Mortimer QC had not translated the career of his father, the blind divorce lawyer Clifford Mortimer, into literary fame, nor into the realm of classic television entertainment, and neither family law in general nor divorce (its best-known feature) in particular appeared in serious academic programmes. Newspapers of the time show that any public interest was confi ned to the sensational details of divorce cases, whereas contemporary students are often aware of current issues in family law from the popular press and more serious newspapers and magazines long before they begin to study family law in structured university programmes, textbooks, specialist journals and law reports; indeed this exposure to family law issues of general interest is often the reason for a student’s early interest in the subject as an option in degree programmes.
