Coal miner, soldier, TV engineer, sailor, property developer, boatbuilder, scallop diver, yacht charter skipper, village pantomime star – Dave Rockley has led a full life. He has also lived through some hair-raising episodes, from pitfalls underground to surviving crocodiles and poisonous centipedes while on active service in the Malayan jungle, and nearly drowning in a diving mishap 80 feet under the cold Scottish ocean. In his late seventies, he climbed a hundred-foot pine tree to cut the top part down single-handed. Having heard some of his stories, his friends encouraged him to write them down while he still could. This book is the result.

When David Morris collapsed after a stroke, he lay unconscious on the floor of his flat for more than two days and was not discovered until he was close to death. Unable at first to walk and eat unaided, he was confined to a hospital for months, but he was determined to get his life back as soon as he could. In this book he tells how he managed it – and found a new life in the sunshine of Cyprus.

When Judge Charles Harris QC retired in 2017, he was the most experienced and longest-serving member of England’s cadre of civil judges. After 26 years as a Barrister, he spent 24 years as a
Circuit Judge, working in Oxford, the Midlands and London, and has dealt with every kind of dispute, from dangerous animals and negligent doctors to the sale of the Ritz Hotel. During this time the law has become steadily more complex, more expensive and harder to use. It is now often impossible for ordinary people to understand, and sometimes hard for judges. This attractively-written book, depicting the texture of judicial life, shows how this has happened, and asks why nothing is done about it.

Besides revealing the judicial world, this book is also an entertaining memoir of life outside the law. The author describes his post- war childhood and education, standing for Parliament, ballooning in India, encounters in Africa, skiing in the Alps, learning to fly, deerstalking, fireworks, and his family and friends in rural North Oxfordshire.

Join Lakhan Prem on a journey through his colourful life, from humble beginnings in Trinidad’s Indian community to London and beyond as he travelled the world. Remembered in exquisite detail, and told in honest language full of colour and vivid imagery, this is a must-read memoir of a life lived to the full.