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The other revelatory chapter is the penultimate one, in which all three of Carman's former wives are given space to reveal, in their own words, the stories of their failed marriages. Each relationship, according to these narratives, began well, but soon deteriorated into a sort of hell of debt, abuse, drink, absence, sexual inadequacy and violence. Carman is, as his grandson says, unable to defend himself. But there is enough of a consistent pattern in these statements - partly corroborated by [Dominic Carman] himself - to suggest that they are fair accounts of what it was like to be married to Carman. The main exception is the Aitken case, which required Carman - already quite ill with cancer - to perform the longest and most difficult cross-examination of his career. Dominic Carman has interviewed Aitken, as well as his silk, Charles Gray QC, and the judge, Sir Oliver Popplewell. Aitken's view apparently remains that his bravura performance in the witness box had sufficiently convinced the judge that without the dramatic and damning last-minute evidence from British Airways, he would have been home and dry. Dominic Carman has written a strange, unsettling book. It is, by turns, funny, painful, voyeuristic, Pooterish, muddled, touching, unbalanced, amateurish, painful, racy, angry and - despite it all - affectionate. His father would have hated it. There is no doubt that, were he still alive, he would have moved legal heaven and earth to prevent the book's publication. But the dead can't sue - a technicality which has robbed us of what might have been the ultimate case: Carman v Carman.

At the age of 40, Dominic Carman did something his father had expected - had almost given up expecting - of him since his school days: he made the news. Carman senior was dead by then. He missed the launch of his son's book, the splash it made and the hackles it raised. The libel lawyer would have loved the belated entrance of his son into public life, but there his enchantment might have ended. Dominic's book is biographical; the subject is his father; the splash is drink, violence and confused sexual identity. It is not a portrait the esteemed QC ever presented of himself. Some say this is because it isn't true, but most accept it with the proviso: why on earth did Dominic write it? \"Not being great company\" is an understatement. After [George Carman]'s death, his first wife, Ursula, gave an interview to a newspaper and talked about her abusive marriage. Dominic's mother, Celia, told a similar story, as did his third wife, Frances. George, they said, drank and gambled and was frequently cruel. \"Often, I would curl up into a ball on the floor as he punched and kicked me,\" said Ursula. Dominic recalls in the book that, \"after one Sunday lunchtime drinking session, he came into the kitchen, threw out the cutlery drawer and pulled out two large carving knives, saying, 'which do you want first.'\" One of Dominic's key words is \"balance\". He mentions it seven times in the interview. Balance and honesty were the two thing he wanted to achieve in the book, the two things he identified as most lacking in his father. In an odd way, it is a generous piece of work because of it. Despite the book's detractors - not least George's former companion, Karen Phillipps, who calls Dominic's version of his father \"bitter and absurd\" - the tone is not vindictive but curious. An extraordinary animosity exists between Dominic and Phillipps, who is a barrister and was Carman's companion for more than 10 years. In his book, Dominic paints her as a gold-digger, implies that her relationship with his father was never consummated and that she treated him cruelly. She denies all this with some exasperation.

\"They do awesome things,\" [George Carman] said \"I do a lot of walking, that's very important to keep my lungs healthy,\" he said. His routine includes daily 2- to 3-mile walks and on weekends with a friend he makes a nearly 6-mile loop near Sabbathday Lake. \"This is a wonderful gift. All you can do is live to the fullest and be a good role model,\" George said.

In 2004, [George Carman]'s friends and family organized New Lungs for George, raising money to help with medical expenses and raising awareness about the need for organ transplants. You need to register as an organ or tissue donor, and tell your friends, family, doctor and minister about your decision. The decision should also be clearly noted in a will or living will, because a family's decision to donate is often done while in grief; clear instructions can eliminate confusion and speed donation to a needy patient. Carman was fortunate, and he's thankful to his donor and the donor's family.

Happy days, then, for the Conservatives as David Cameron prepares his team for government. Suddenly there is interest in who's up, who's down. Suddenly it matters. Certainly it matters to the MPs themselves, so congrats to Richard Benyon, MP for Newbury, who is moving from the shadow whips' office to become a minister in the team preparing to move in at Defra. \"Newbury MP promoted in Conservative reshuffle,\" he wrote in a press release. Rob Wilson, the MP for nearby Reading East, appears to be on a different course - once a shadow education minister, now on the lowest rung of the shadow whips' office. Nevertheless he also wrote a release, headlined: \"Wilson promoted to whips' office.\" But then, in his time, he appears to have supped with Labour and the SDP as well as the Tories. If he is confused now, can we blame him?

\"[George Carman], as we all know, is surpassing all expectations, a shock to the medical staff but not a shock to Maine! Go George,\" wrote [Scott Doyle], who is chairman of the New Lungs for George support group and captain of the town's fire and rescue service.

Survivors include his wife, Shawna, of the home; four sons, [George William Carman], Oskaloosa, Iowa, David, Lewistown, Mont., [John], Waukee, Iowa, and Phillip, Centerville, Iowa; six brothers, John, Amazonia, Mo., Charles Ernest, Grant City, Mo., Clifford, Trenton, Mo., Thomas, Novinger, Mo., James, Humansville, Mo., and Keith, St.

TWENTY years ago, in the course of the Ken Dodd income tax trial, defence counsel George Carman, QC, suggested to a bemused Liverpool jury that \"some accountants may be comedians, but not all comedians are accountants\".

[George Carman], a New Gloucester fireman who struggles with cystic fibrosis, has a long way to go to reach his goal of $300,000 to aid his efforts to obtain a lung transplant. But a group formed by his fellow firefighters, New Lungs for George, is steadily gaining steam. Carman and his wife, Amy, will leave Friday for Manhattan to meet with the transplant team at Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital. More than $300,000 will be needed, Carman said, to cover costs associated with the operation. A lifelong fan of all things related to firefighting, he trains with his crew despite a lung condition that often leaves him short of breath. Cystic fibrosis often causes death at very young ages, but Carman has managed with his condition for nearly 40 years.

  The book is divided into sections: espionage (George Blake and John Profumo), literary censorship ( Lady Chatterley's Lover , Fanny Hill ); freedom of the press (including a fascinating portrait of a young, idealistic Jonathan Aitken prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for leaking a document to the Sunday Telegraph about covert government support for the Nigerian government during the Biafran civil war) and film and theatre censorship ( Last Tango in Paris , Mary Whitehouse et al). [Jeremy Hutchinson] is an old-style civil libertarian who believes a jury is an essential bulwark against state tyranny. An Oxford graduate, leader at the criminal Bar, member of the House of Lords, chairman and trustee of the Tate Gallery, and deputy chairman of the Arts Council, he has the accoutrements of a fully fledged member of the British establishment. But Hutchinson is not a snob: he joined the British navy as a rating before the outbreak of war and had a celebratory dinner with Howard Marks following his sensational acquittal on drug-trafficking charges, after a jury accepted that the intelligence services had sanctioned Marks's involvement in the largest ever importation of cannabis. Hutchinson was junior counsel in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case. The jury were obliged to read the book before evidence was heard. They were, even at that juncture, nine-three in favour of acquittal. The Fanny Hill case involved the prosecution of a bookseller in the magistrate's court, and its precedent value was shaky. The three espionage cases all involved guilty pleas. The sentences in two - 42 and 18 years - were unflattering. A plea of guilty is its own craft.