An Epic Journey: The Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London (CCLS) and the Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law at the University of Stockholm

Abstract

My move to academe 

I spent a happy 18 years at Queen Mary, then a college of the University of London and now part of a federal university in its own right. I had been a practising solicitor and partner of a London law firm for many years with no thought of entering the world of academe until a chance remark by an American law professor then visiting at Queen Mary led to my applying for the second Chair. To my astonishment, I was appointed there in October 1971 despite having never taught in my life or been to university, though I did have an external degree at the University of London and had published books and articles which fortunately became established as leading texts. The then Dean, the late Professor Roger Crane, was the only person in England who would have taken such a hair-raising risk, and my debt to him is more than I can express. He was also unique in having founded two law schools, at King’s College London and Queen Mary. Soon after my arrival Roger told me that he had planned to take a year’s sabbatical leave in Australia but felt he should postpone it as I had only just arrived. Cheerily I said he should go and we would somehow manage. So, after three months I found myself Acting Dean of a Law School! How the Queen Mary Law Faculty survived I do not know. It was certainly a baptism of fire.