John Grillo: Judge Teasdale

Quotes 

• [Rumpole is cross-examining Amelia Nettleship in court] 

  Horace Rumpole : May I read a short extract from a so-called historical novel entitled "Lord Stingo's Fancy".

  Judge Teasdale : Ah yes, isn't that the one that ends happily?

  Horace Rumpole : Happily *all* Miss Nettleship's novels end, my Lord - eventually.

  [laughter from the jury] 

• [Rumpole is reading an extract from one of Amelia Nettleship's historical novels] 

  Horace Rumpole : "Sophia had first set eyes on Lord Stingo when she was a dewy eighteen-year-old and he had clattered up to her father's castle, exhausted from the Battle of Nazeby. Now at the ball to triumphantly celebrate the gorgeous enthroning coronation of the Merry Monarch, King Charles II, they were to meet again. Sophia was now in her twenties. But in ways too numerous to completely describe, still an unspoiled girl at heart." You call that a historical novel?

  Amelia Nettleship : Certainly.

  Horace Rumpole : Haven't you forgotten something?

  Amelia Nettleship : I don't think so. What?

  Horace Rumpole : Oliver Cromwell.

  Amelia Nettleship : I really don't know what you mean.

  Horace Rumpole : Well clearly, if this girl... this Sophia... how do you describe her?

  Judge Teasdale : "Dewy", Mr Rumpole.

  Horace Rumpole : Ah yes, "dewy". I'm grateful to your Lordship. I had forgotten the full horror of the passage. If this dew-bespattered Sophie was eighteen at the time of the Battle of Naseby, in the reign of King Charles I, she would have been thirty-three in the coronation year of King Charles II, because Oliver Cromwell came in between.

  Amelia Nettleship : Ah, I am an artist, Mr Rumpole.

  Horace Rumpole : What sort of an artist?

  Judge Teasdale : I think Miss Nettleship means "an artist in words".

  Horace Rumpole : Ah, then your Lordship is undoubtedly interested that in the passage I have just read out, there were two split infinitives and a tautology.

  Judge Teasdale : A what, Mr Rumpole?

  Horace Rumpole : Two words having the same meaning, my Lord. As in "enthroning coronation". Tautology. T-A-U...

  Judge Teasdale : I can spell, Mr Rumpole.

  Horace Rumpole : Then your Lordship has the advantage of the witness. She spells "Naseby" with a Z. These questions go straight to the heart of this witness's credibility. I have to suggest, Miss Nettleship, that as an historical novellist, you are a complete fake. You have no respect for history and very little for the English language.

  Amelia Nettleship : I try to tell a story, Mr Rumpole.

  Horace Rumpole : And your evidence to this court has been, to use my Lord's vivid expression, "a rattling good yarn".