By general agreement, he was the greatest English judge since the second world war: the only man in the modern age to be, in short order, Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice (head of the judiciary in England and Wales) and senior law lord in the House of Lords. But to himself, as he strode out at weekends across the brooding hills of the Welsh borders, Tom Bingham was just a small, jobbing figure adding another grey stone or two to the ancient, intricate web of walls known as English common law.
他是公认的二战以来英国最伟大的法官：在当代只有他曾在短期内同时担任案卷主事官、首席大法官(英格兰和威尔士司法机构的首长)及上议院高级法官。但是对他来说，当他在周末跨越威尔士边界的忧郁的山林时，汤姆.宾翰只是一个微不足道的小人物，他整天忙碌于为一面古老而错综复杂的的墙上增添一两块石头，这面墙就是英国的普通法。
As a passionate historian, his subject at Balliol, he liked to put himself in a procession of judicial folk: 12th-century judges touring the shires to set up the royal writ, 17th-century lawyers wrestling over the rights of king and Parliament. But the most interesting era of all, he thought, for a judge devoted to defending liberty, was the age he lived and worked in.
作为一个充满激情的历史学家，宾翰效力于巴尔·利奥尔国王。他喜欢效仿一系列关于法官的民间事迹：12世纪的法官遍访整个郡县来起草皇室文书，17世纪的律师与国王和议会夺权。但是他认为，对于一个想用一生来捍卫自由的法官来说，最适合的时代就是他们现在所生活和工作的时代。