Every line of that potted autobiography in the Guardian seems revealing of how Maugham might now be moved to uncover uncomfortable truths. He has maintained a distant relationship with Benedictus, who reminds him, he says, of Boris Johnson – “that same Etonian thing”. He is reconciled to a “loving relationship I would never have thought possible” with his mother and stepfather, but only after “several years with a brilliant psychotherapist, Paula Barnby, who led me to what I can only describe as an epiphany”. When we read these stories, our default is to assume it’s not as bad as it looks, there will be some innocent explanation Hoffman sat as a Law Lord in the extradition case of Augusto Pinochet.That case had been brought to the House of Lords by Amnesty International (AI) and others.

Jolyon Maugham KC founded Good Law Project in 2017 with the belief that the law can also put power into the hands of ordinary people. It has brought a series of landmark cases against a dishonest and increasingly autocratic government and won widespread acclaim in successfully reversing Boris Johnson's unlawful suspension of Parliament. Already the largest legal campaign group in the UK, Good Law Project is shining light into corners the establishment would rather keep dark - from the failures of Brexit to the still-developing PPE scandal, to the tax arrangements of business giants like Uber. The political landscape is increasingly polarised, almost tribal. This book covers one arm of the state (The law) challenging the legislator ( the incumbent government). Today, challenging or holding to account the government doesn’t give rise to debate, it entrenches people’s beliefs. Often, these are based on nothing more than holding faith and facts in the same regard. If you like or see your identity in the reflection of this government then you will not like the challenge this book documents.

In our conversations, Maugham referred to himself a couple of times as “a Kiwi iconoclast”. He accepts that maintaining that rebellious self-image while standing in a tweed suit outside the central criminal court and enjoying a tax lawyer’s salary might grate with some people. “I’m a middle-aged, married QC. And so my ability to pretend to be an outsider is conditioned by those realities,” he says. “But I do remember the 16-year-old who was homeless. I remember my sense of outrage on arriving in the north-east of England, at the divide between the haves and the have-nots. I remember being really angry listening to Radio 4, staggered by just how complacent the English middle class at rest was.” The lawyers’ letter was a response to documents leaked to Maugham, which were shared with the press. Having held himself out as someone delivering transparency and accountability, Maugham says: “Behaving consistently with what I set out to do actually is upholding the standards of a courageous, independent bar.” He called up a “suitably dour lawyer, who I’ve known for ever,” Jason Coppel QC, a leading procurement barrister. They talked through what it would look like to bring a legal challenge to discover more about how that PestFix contract had come about. “And the litigation came out of that, really.” Taxation law specialist Maugham was widely condemned in 2019 after claiming he had “killed a fox with a baseball bat” while wearing his wife's kimono in his garden on Boxing Day. With the news last week of the departure of Dominic Cummings and the promise of a “reset” of Johnson’s government, I wonder if Maugham believes that the culture that resists scrutiny will change?

I am sorry my approaches have been rebuffed. The book seeks in earnest to advance that same agenda - because the status quo only serves the patriarchy.” ‘We like a laugh’We both know I have written to many GC feminists seeking a private discussion of trans issues and to de-escalate the ‘debate’. Good law is difficult and, to most people, rather boring. It does not play well on social media. One benefit of the less highly networked culture of the recent past is that the acquisition of influence tended to be slow, and meritorious; whereas today, a certain kind of status within the ever-growing online legal world can be achieved swiftly, by playing to the cheap seats. So, for the time being at least, it is hard to completely refute Maugham’s clichéd insistence that “the real court is that of public opinion”. And still, from a comprehensive school intake of 226, you are one of two to make it to university. You beat off competition from Boris Johnson to win the party nomination for a safe seat which you hold and then strengthen over successive Parliaments. You become a member of the European Research Group (ERG) and argue for – and from a narrow referendum mandate help extract – a hard break from the United Kingdom’s near 50-year membership of the European Union. And for a time you’re mooted as a possible future leader of the Conservative Party. As a youngster, Maugham says, he never doubted that he would be successful. And if we adopt his definition of success — basically, winding people up ‘til they slag you off — he was correct. It is his insistence that he is, and was at all relevant times, right that precipitates much of the text of this work. (“Of course I get stuff wrong sometimes,” he concedes, but details are not shared.) Journalists who upset him, colleagues who question him, solicitors who take against him, and of course judges who find against him: they all have their turpitude explained to them, in painstaking detail. This book has a central and unfulfilled purpose in common with the Good Law Project itself: the protection and improvement of the reputation of Jolyon Maugham KC. Jolyon Maugham’s revealing account of his life and career exposes a flawed world view so common to lawyers