David Walbank KC writes on Edward Carson for New Law Journal in his series: ‘Lives of the Great Advocates’

David Walbank KC has been commissioned by New Law Journal to write a series of six biographical essays on the greatest advocates in English legal history. In today’s edition he discusses the extraordinary life and career, in law and politics, of Sir Edward Carson QC.

He begins as follows:

“The life of Edward Carson (1854–1935) was marked by contradictions. He was the Dubliner with the lilting Irish brogue, who became a luminary of the Temple in the heart of legal London. The southern Unionist and Anglican, who assumed the leadership of the Presbyterian north. The law officer who flirted with treason and revolution. The quintessential King’s Counsel, more at home at the Bailey than in Whitehall, who came close to the pinnacle of executive power at a time of grave national crisis. The dour, hatchet-faced strongman, who was a hopeless hypochondriac and craved constant reassurance, but late in life entered into a giddily romantic second marriage with a young wife thirty years his junior.

Most notably of all, he was the man of stern unbending principle, who derided the compromises of fellow politicians, only to abandon his own ‘lodestar’ of a united Ireland within the Union and Empire and embrace in its stead a devolved self-government for six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster.”

You can read the full article here: https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/lives-of-the-great-advocates-edward-carson

David Walbank KC has vast experience in defending charges of white-collar crime and is currently instructed by a series of front-rank defence firms in major fraud prosecutions. He is also the founder of www.crimecast.law in which he presents more than 250 video case reviews of recent judgments in criminal cases.