<p>This is the tenth edition of a book that was first published in 1979. I have been one of the authors for all ten editions, yet I am not a lawyer. I freely acknowledge the assistance I have received over the years from my learned co-authors who are all lawyers and have saved me from numerous be tises: Graham Stedman, Kit Burden and now David Berry. I am now 82 and this tenth edition is my swansong in law, but before I finally hang up my metaphorical wig, it may interest some readers to know how a non-lawyer got into the business of writing law books. At university I read Latin and Greek which qualifies you for nothing much in the way of a living except teaching more Latin and Greek. I read classics because I was good at it and enjoyed it and had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. When I graduated, my university appointments board suggested law and I got myself articled to a firm of solicitors in a Buckinghamshire town. I was there for a bit over a year and spent several months of that time at the College of Law in London reading for and eventually passing what I think was then called Part 1. I enjoyed law&mdash;the way case law exalted anecdotes into something higher appealed to me. However, I became somewhat frustrated with my firm. They were very pleasant people but I was basically given dogs body work. I must be pretty well the last person in England to learn how to prepare abstracts of title&mdash;photocopiers were just coming in then, which soon made it an obsolete skill. Matters came to a head when I tackled the next step in qualifying as a solicitor: trust accounts and book keeping. I found the subject hopelessly opaque and uncongenial&mdash;not helped by the fact that my firm would not let me see how they handled such things&mdash;I think they were terrified I might find out how much the Partners earned. I also took a rooted dislike to the textbook I had to study: Harrison &amp; Hillman. The result was that I failed my first shot at the trust accounts and book keeping exam.This is the tenth edition of a book that was first published in 1979. I have been one of the authors for all ten editions, yet I am not a lawyer. I freely acknowledge the assistance I have received over the years from my learned co-authors who are all lawyers and have saved me from numerous be tises: Graham Stedman, Kit Burden and now David Berry. I am now 82 and this tenth edition is my swansong in law, but before I finally hang up my metaphorical wig, it may interest some readers to know how a non-lawyer got into the business of writing law books. At university I read Latin and Greek which qualifies you for nothing much in the way of a living except teaching more Latin and Greek. I read classics because I was good at it and enjoyed it and had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. When I graduated, my university appointments board suggested law and I got myself articled to a firm of solicitors in a Buckinghamshire town. I was there for a bit over a year and spent several months of that time at the College of Law in London reading for and eventually passing what I think was then called Part 1. I enjoyed law&mdash;the way case law exalted anecdotes into something higher appealed to me. However, I became somewhat frustrated with my firm. They were very pleasant people but I was basically given dogs body work. I must be pretty well the last person in England to learn how to prepare abstracts of title&mdash;photocopiers were just coming in then, which soon made it an obsolete skill. Matters came to a head when I tackled the next step in qualifying as a solicitor: trust accounts and book keeping. I found the subject hopelessly opaque and uncongenial&mdash;not helped by the fact that my firm would not let me see how they handled such things&mdash;I think they were terrified I might find out how much the Partners earned. I also took a rooted dislike to the textbook I had to study: Harrison &amp; Hillman. The result was that I failed my first shot at the trust accounts and book keeping exam.</p>
