The philosophical answer to Milton's problem is, like so many philosophical answers, a counter-question. What do you mean by human life? This could involve further probing of a kind that a pre-Darwinian like John Milton would fail to comprehend. Does he include Neanderthal man, for example, in “human life”, or does he want to start with Homo sapiens?

A resurrected Milton might protest that in writing Paradise Lost he was not concerned with problems of evolution (of which he had not previously heard). His question suggests that he was thinking of the “life” of a particular “human being”; but he knew so little of what we now call biology that he would probably have been as nonplussed by the biological answer to his problem as one given in terms of prehistory.

Floating charges have been an integral part of company financing for over 100 years, and yet their most fundamental characteristic remains the subject of debate: what interest does the floating chargee have prior to crystallisation? The answer to this question is not academic: disputes between the chargee and interested third parties depend for their resolution on the view taken. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly difficult to rely upon precedent or statutory provisions for simple rules to resolve these disputes: the complexity of modern commercial transactions and the ingenuity of advisers now give rise to rights which cannot always be equated with more traditional security devices and which may not need to be registered. This makes resort to fundamental principles necessary, and the elucidation of those principles crucial.

In the United Kingdom there has traditionally been little litigation over the award of public contracts. This is largely due to the absence, in the past, of formal rules regulating contract procedures, which might have founded a basis for legal actions. It is also to some extent a product of the reluctance of contractors to “bite the hand that feeds” and jeopardise their chances of future contracts; this factor may have discouraged contractors from taking advantage of the potentiality of common law doctrines for providing protection for bidders in the tendering process.

Edward Christian has been treated unfairly by history. As the first Downing Professor of the Laws of England and the first lecturer on common law in Cambridge, Christian suffered the chronological misfortune of launching his academic career in the wake of Blackstone's extraordinary achievement. Until recent years Blackstone's brilliance has obscured the intellectual originality and historical significance of all his successors.1 Moreover, Christian's misfortune in following Blackstone was aggravated by a lack of professional success at the Bar and by a seemingly abrasive personality that won him a number of eloquent enemies whose ridicule and comical anecdotes have long outlived their target.