This case really highlights the difference between barristers in Rumpole's Chambers, on the one hand there is the usual suspects. Those that simply wish to climb the greasy legal ladder, eg Erskine Brown, and the learned chambers head Guthrie Featherstone MP. Who desire to do so with the least possible effort, seeking the easy way out by simply Mitigating, instead of bothering to make any kind of defence. Clients are expected to consider themselves grateful, to have such learned luminaries assigned to them at all.
Then there is Rumpole the Don Quixote of the legal profession, who would far rather quibble over the merest scrap, of what the Mitigators would consider inconsequential ephemera.
Than ever even consider throwing in the sponge let alone the legal towel.
As ever he also has to contend with the usual suspects who are never even prepared to give him the slightest benefit of any doubt. Unlearned Legal Eagle Erskine Brown, as ever more interested in evicting Rumpole from Chambers. And she who must be obeyed, who remains the Chief Prosecution Witness.