FREE COUNTRY

Abstract

Sir Sydney Kentridge KCMG, QC, Hart Publishing Oxford 2012 ISBN-10: 1849464677,  ISBN-13: 978-1849464673 Price £20.00 hb‘Free Country’ is a collection of lectures and talks, twelve in all, given by Sir Sydney Kentridge QC, over a period running from 1979 to 2011 and now published as a collection. Sir Sydney became in 2009 an honorary LLD of the University of Buckingham, an addition to the seven or eight honorary degrees that he already held from Universities in England, South Africa and elsewhere in the world. Susan Edwards, Professor in Law at the University of Buckingham, asked me to write a review of “Free Country’ for inclusion in this year’s edition of The Denning Law Journal, published annually by the University. It was an honour and privilege to have received this invitation, my only qualification for which is that besides, like Sir Sydney, having had a career as a lawyer in England, I like him, was educated and brought up in South Africa and, when I came to England,  did so on a South African passport. Having read, and re-read, the remarkable collection of lectures and talks that constitutes ‘Free Country’ I find it impossible to write about the collection without first writing about its very distinguished author.