Alfred Thompson Denning was born on 23rd January 1899. He was educated at Andover Grammar School and Magdalen College, Oxford. A brilliant student, he was placed in the 1st Class in both the Mathematical Final School and subsequently the Final School of Jurisprudence. Eldon Scholar and Prize Student of the Inns of Court, he was called to the Bar in 1923, becoming a KC fifteen years later. In 1944 he was knighted and appointed a Judge of the High Court of Justice. He became a Lord Justice of Appeal and a Privy Councillor in 1948. Created a Life Peer in 1957, he took the title Baron Denning of Whitchurch. The same year he was also appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. Lord Denning has been Master of the Rolls since 1962.

"It is something to have lived through this century --- the most dangerous century in the history of the English people. Our family has done its part. All five of us brothers fought in the wars. Two were lost. They were the best of us. Three survive. One to become a General. One an Admiral. And me, the Master of the Rolls. Some day, if I have time, I will tell the family story." (Lord Denning, The Discipline of Law)

Lord Denning has now found time to tell the remarkable story of his family. He recounts how the five brothers and sister grew up in the small Hampshire town where their father was a draper, and describes the parts they played in this "most dangerous century". The stories of the brothers are brought vividly to life by the use of extracts from their letters or writings, by extracts from the "War Diary" accounts of the Battle (on land) of the Somme and of the Battle (at sea) of Jutland, and by quotations from contemporary literature.

In telling his own part in the story, Lord Denning includes mentions of some of the most famous, and some of the most notorious, law cases of our times. These include the unfinished case of Stephen Ward, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, the horrifying 1974 Birmingham pub-bombings, the British Steel Corporation "mole", and the strange case of Grenouille v. National Union of Seamen, reported in Not Yet The Times in 1979.