Custodians of continuity in an era of change: an oral history of the everyday lives of Crown Court clerks between 1972 and 2015

This article discusses an oral history doctoral research project about the little known, yet critical role of the court clerk in Crown Courts. It is surprising that even though Crown Court clerks have been pivotal in trials of the most serious criminal offences, they have been neglected in legal scholarship. This research project has contributed towards filling an absence in the academic literature about the nature and function of their vital work between 1972 and 2015, and was carried out by Dvora Liberman, in partnership with the London School of Economics Legal Biography Project and National Life Stories, British Library.