Speech by Rt Hon Lord Dyson, Master of the Rolls at The High Sheriff of Oxfordshire's Annual Law Lecture on the 13 October 2015.

My first idea was to give a lecture about the so-called Compensation Culture: what is it and should we be concerned about it? That is a topical subject which the organisers of the lecture thought would be of interest. But as we all know, 2015 is the 800^thanniversary of Magna Carta and it was pointed out to me that the Bodleian Library has no fewer than 4 of the 17 surviving pre-1300 engrossments of Magna Carta? So I was asked whether I could introduce a Magna Carta theme into my lecture? I did not want to give up on Compensation Culture. Hence the somewhat Delphic title of the lecture "Magna Carta and the Compensation Culture" . The title was the easy bit"¦