The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 26

THE GUARDIAN Reviews, Personal 6 Wednesday January 13 1993 The Cook Report, Dying For Europe, A Day In The Life, World In Action 30 0 Years Adam Sweeting has URLY his critics, investigator but it's Roger not Cook every TV reporter who would accost a group of Chinese on the street in Manchester and demand information about their Triad activities (The Cook Report, ITV). Although he's a kung-fu expert, Alan Chan ignominiously took refuge from the hectoring interrogator in the gents in a nearby restaurant. As Triad supremo Georgie Pie fled into Stockport police station, Cook badgered him with questions about extortion, violence and being an illegal immigrant. Perhaps it's Cook's paratrooperlike presence and bombastic media profile which protects him (he now has his own graphic logo, an image of himself standing in a doorway like Bodie in The Professionals). Joe Tan, a former Hong Kong policeman, had no such defence when he agreed to become involved in the Flying Dragon video shop in Manchester, set up by The Cook Report to lure the Triads into the open.

"Being a good citizen, we have a duty to keep the bad guys off the road," said Tan, a sentiment he didn't appear to regret even after hidden cameras had recorded him being savagely beaten by a gang of Triad enforcers. Tan leapt over a banister to escape from a potentially fatal second encounter with the same bunch, giving Cook's squad dramatic footage of him crawling across a main road. with broken bones in both feet, desperately trying to persuade a motorist to rescue him. Unfortunately, while one marvelled at Cook's nerve and Tan's heroics, there was no evidence that any of this posed a major threat to Triad activities in British cities. Meanwhile, Francine Stock was jetting around the EC in Dying For Europe (Europe On The Brink, BBC 2), trying to make sense of the continent's war-torn past and uncertain future.

Francine wanted to know if we could create a European identity that people would die for. Not in Oxfordshire we can't, where Debbie Hemmings of Watlington seemed far too young to be saying things like "England to me is the Royal Family, the heritage of England, the beautiful countryside we have, the traditional things we have." as if making a shameless appeal to American tourists to visit Museum Britain, where the clock always runs backwards. Elsewhere. Francine (nodding sagely as her subjects babbled at her in several EC languages) found optimism in Spain, to whom the EC doles out spectacular largesse, chaotic squalor in southern Italy, and separatist movements in Switzerland, Belgium and northern Italy. The bloom has faded from the original ideal of European unity, as launched in the 1957 Treaty Of Rome (UK not included).

The amazing thing is that anybody could ever have believed it would work. Disparate nation states pooling their sovereignty and resources to work for the common good? It sounds like Star Trek. As somebody pointed out, selfinterest offers Europe its best hope of pulling together. As hordes of refugees from collapsing African nations and penniless eastern European states start banging piteously at the EC's borders, the Community could find itself uniting through atavistic fears of racism and Islam ic, all would be for the worst in the scariest of all possible worlds. Desmond Wilcox did his best to put a smile on our faces and a great deal more money into Mohammed AlFayed's pocket with a visit to Har- rods (A Day In The Life, ITV).

This was all frightfully jolly, as Des marvelled at the wit and wisdom of the "green men" who greet customers at the door and answer questions about everything under the Knightsbridge sun, admired the £20 million spending spree which Mr Al-Fayed has undertaken in the Egyptian Room, and generally gazed in wide-eyed wonderment at the food hall, the toy department where you can buy a model sports car in British racing green for £20,000, and even at the complex video surveillance system in the basement. Last week, Desmond did a snow-job on Docklands, and this series shaping up as his bid to win the Golden Sickbag for PR Man of the Year. There was also a distinct undertone of self-congratulation in World In Action 30 Years (ITV), as assorted alumni of Granada's investigative institution, from David Plowright to Margaret Beckett, ruminated about the show's finest half-hours. The programme was merely a barrage of clips with bits of talking in between, but glimpses of the Grosvenor Square riots, John Pilger in Vietnam, Andrew Jennings panting after jogging policeman Tony Lundy who was supposedly unfit for duty, and Matthew Parris trying to survive on the dole in Newcastle left you wondering if we would ever see World In Action's like again in the new age of casino TV. The Game of Love and Chance Cottesloe Michael Billington AST time we saw Marivaux's glittering masterpiece, The IGame of Love and Chance, it was played, somewhat eccentrically, by a Paris-based company in monkey-masks.

Mike Alfreds and Neil Bartlett in their new production for Cambridge Theatre Company and Gloria, now at the Cottesloe, don't go that far. But, by swathing the play in thirties high camp, they undercut Marivaux's narrative speed and psychological power. Written in 1730, it remains a classic comedy about the interaction of sex and class. Silvia, a society lady anxious to get a peek at the husband proposed by her father, swaps places with her maid. What she doesn't know is that her suitor, for exactly the same reason, has changed clothes with his servant, Arlecchino.

Marivaux exploits this fearful symmetry with delicious piquancy. Both high and low-born fall instantly in love: the irony is that all the partners believe they are attracted by people way below or above their station. I see it as a delicately subversive play that argues that passion is stronger than reason, love larger than class. But Marivaux's pre-Pirandellian fascination with role playing is already complex enough. To this, however, the production and Bartlett's translation add yet another layer of theatrical artifice.

Updating is fine; but characters comment on the action, are scen making up at their dressing tables and Silvia's brother is turned into a conscience-less Coward uttering selfreferential lines like "Funny how eloquent cheap emotions can be." Not only is the lily needlessly painted: it also becomes difficult to make the transition from high camp to genuine emotional pain. Oddly enough the servants come off infinitely better than the masters. Marcello Magni, Complicite's resident balding clown, turns Arlecchino into a figure of irrepressible Grouchoesque lechery torever suding across the floor on his knees while tendering bouquets of roses. He is ideally partnered by Caroline Quentin's Maid who feverishly manipulates his wedding tackle while firmly protesting her modesty. But, fine actress though she is, Maggie Steed as Silvia is left with the almost impossible task of moving from vain poseur to distraught emotonal victim and Stefan Bednarczyk as her brother is forced into striking gowned attitudes and strumming sub-Noel ditties on the piano.

Private Lives may indeed owe much to this masterly quadrille. But Marivaux, I submit, deserves to be treated as something more than a Cowardly romp. FOLK Roy Harper Bloomsbury Theatre Robin Denselow OY and knows he Harper it. doesn't His had a care long-time rotten who year partner ran off with the punk fiddler Nigel Kennedy, and his latest batch of songs. which deal with this loss, are not too easily available because his record label has just gone bust.

In a year when Dylan was feted in Madison Square Gardens for his longevity. poor old Roy Harper, who was counted as "the man to succeed Dylan" back in the 60s, seemed headed for oblivion yet again. Those who have observed the Harper phenomenon over the past 25 years should know that it's at moments like these that the ultimate hippy folk survivor is at his best (just as he is likely to self-destruct when things are going well). He may appear to be wildly unfashionable at the moment, but as the 60s ethos creeps back in, it seems that Harper has retained his cult following, as shown by the scenes at the Bloomsbury Theatre, where he gave two shows at the weekend. His audience is still the "folky student population" he sang about in the 60s.

and as soon as he appeared a devoted follower clambered on stage to offer him the first of many exotic cigarettes. Harper never became a major star, despite the attention of famous friends from Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin, largely because he always refused to give conventional concerts. He always rambled on and on between songs, and that's still the case, especially on an evening when he starts by announcing: "I'm suitably out of it already." But the quality of his playing and singing when he eventually gets round to it has actually improved over the years, and he's still one of the few songwriters we have who dares to be both distinctly English and romantic. At the Bloomsbury he embarked on one of the pained and remarkably honest new songs about his personal life, Next To Me, gave up on it in despair, and quickly retreated back to the 60s and You Don't Need Money. From then on he swapped cheerfully between carly favourites and more recent social comment, helped considerably by the arrival of the young Nick Harper, who not only kept up with his dad but added some remarkably inspired and rousing semi-acoustic lead guitar.

By the second half, when there was thankfully far more playing than talking or smoking, they had shaken new life into oldies like Highway Blues, given a noisy imitation of Pink Floyd on the new The Fourth World, and revived the still charming and lyrical When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease. Harper is asunpredictable as ever, but on this showing he actually deserves a new lease of life thanks mainly to his latest disasters and his highly impressive sidekick. Obituary Joe Cantley Genuine judge IN THE parlance of his own County Palatine Joe Cantley was It was this quality of genuineness that steered Cantley, who has died aged 82, from the local Bar to the High Court Bench, which he graced for 20 virtually incident-free years. Joe Cantley was the only child of a Crumpsall doctor. Manchester Grammar School sent him on to Manchester University which later much deserved LLD.

He was called by Middle Temple in 1933, obtaining a Certificate of Honour in his finals. He returned to Manchester under Denis Gerrard, one of the leading juniors of the northern circuit. He soon established his practice, but for the duration of the war he put his enthusiasm into the Royal Artillery, serving in North Africa and Italy. Like many others, he had to start again at the local Bar; a large general but local practice in his native Manchester providing most of the work. His forthright, honest manner as an advocate and as a negotiator in the court corridors earned him sincere friends, great respect and no begrudging.

After taking Silk in 1954, he was made Recorder of Oldham and in the following year he was made the judge of the Salford Hundred Court of Record, an ancient civil judicial post, much coveted. He showed himself at Salford to be a fair, good humoured almost chuckling judge during his fiveyear tenure of the office. Cantley had perhaps taken Silk a little too early. Civil legal aid was in its infancy, criminal work was virtually unpaid and good briefs were the exception. Mature leaders, though infants in Silk, were chasing such work as came along.

Cantley wisely took all that was offered in the Divorce and Queens Bench Divisions as well as the Crown Court. Nothing scintillated, yet Cantley persevered and his humility carried him through. The circuit was delighted to see Cantley appointed to the High Court Bench in 1965. Hard judicial work earned him a reputation for thoroughness, fairness and comment-free straight judgments. He was tantrum-free, indeed, almost at times too relaxed as a judge though discipline reigned in his court.

Who was to preside at the trial of Jeremy Thorpe in 1979? Few judges on the Bench at the time would have not been on nodding terms with the defendant. Cantley had a good record on his own circuit and Lord Widgery handpicked him for the Thorpe trial. which also saw George Carman's debut in London. (His opponent was Peter Taylor QC, the present Lord Chief Justice.) The choice of trial judge was surely happy for Carman, who must have felt in sporting terms that he was playing at home, familiar with every foible of Cantley's character. It was an uninhibited Carman that secured the acquittal, yet not only Private Eye but other commentators severely criticised Cantley for favouring the defence.

His frequent references to the onus of proof raised many eyebrows. But this was typical Cantley, blunt and straight. If the "conspiracy" was a Cantley was entitled to use simple English to convey his views to the jury of the alleged victim as "a crook, a fraud, a Differing informed views are still held. If Cantley endured malevolence after the Thorpe trial, this was soon neutered by Cantley's decision made in Chambers, refusing to order the striking out of the civil -action initiated by the Birmingham Six against the West Midlands police. Cantley's decision was reversed in the Court of Appeal and Denning's dicta now sound frightening.

The majority of legal opinion would today support Cantley. Members of the Lancastrian Association in London will remember Cantley with joy and affection. He worked unsparingly for his fellow Lancastrians, crowning his time with a magnificent reception in his Inn. Cantley toasted the Duke of Lancaster with relish. Joseph Cantley, born August 8.

1910; died January 6, 1993. Lord Lloyd of Hampstead ORD LLOYD of Hampstead, who has died aged 77, contributed to many public, political and legal fields. His most general influence, however, is on the numerous teachers and students of law throughout the common law world and beyond who have used the various editions of his books on legal theory. As Quain Professor of Jurisprudence in the University of London at University College, from 1956 to 1982, he adopted an approach to his subject that refused to allow it to be limited by disciplinary boundaries. He was modest about the range of knowledge he brought to his theoretical works, but he gave them an unusual breadth and openness, somehow mirroring in his approach the catholicity of his own interests and achievements.

Dennis Lloyd combined academic life with practice at the Bar and active involvement in the politics of law reform. He served for two decades on the Lord Chancellor's Law Reform Committee, influenced the drafting of landlord and tenant legislation, and wrote extensively on such legal subjects as rent controls, associations, the utility of bills of rights, public policy and administrative law. A life peer from 1965, he also served the British film industry in a range of voluntary responsibilities. From 1969 until retirement he was Head of the Law Department at University College. Perhaps the sheer range of his interests, and involvement with practical issues stopped him expounding his own theoretical system.

After graduating in London in 1935, he attended Wittgenstein's seminars in Cambridge and found his linguistic clarification of immense value to lawyers. But legal practice, interrupted by war service, intervened and when the first edition of his major jurisprudence text appeared in 1959 he dismissed notions that linguistic analysis could solve most problems of legal theory. His reformist politics and immersion in legal practicalities may also have contributed to his conviction that theoretical studies of law required the wide resources of social science and history to relate them to practical experience of legal and social life. He rejected natural law ideas since he saw values as matters for conscious choice in specific historical conditions. Law is a matter of power, he thought, even if transformed in stable societies into legitimate authority.

His short text, The Idea of Law remarkably reliable over an immense range of material, still in print and politically relevant nearly 30 years after first publication frequently cites Max Weber..