Alfred Denning

Alfred Thompson "Tom" Denning, Baron Denning, (23 January 1899 – 5 March 1999), was an English barrister and judge.

Denning was born on 23 January 1899 in Whitchurch, Hampshire, to Charles Denning, a draper, and his wife Clara Denning (née Thompson).

He was one of six children; his older brother Reginald Denning later became a staff officer with the British Army, and his younger brother Norman Denning became Director of Naval Intelligence and Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Intelligence).

Denning was born two months earlier than expected and almost died at birth; he was so small and weak that he was nicknamed 'Tom Thumb' and could fit in a pint pot.

He was named after Alfred the Great by his sister Marjorie, and was baptised on 23 April 1899 at All Hallows Church, Whitchurch.

Denning, along with his older brother Gordon, began his schooling at the National School of Whitchurch, one of many set up by the National Society for the Education of the Poor.

Both boys won scholarships to Andover Grammar School, where Denning excelled academically, winning four prizes for English essays on the subjects of "The Great Authors", "Macaulay", "Carlyle" and "Milton".

The outbreak of the First World War saw most of the schoolmasters leave to join the British armed forces, being replaced by female teachers.

At the time Denning wanted to become a mathematician, but none of the new teachers knew enough mathematics to teach him; instead, he taught himself.

He qualified to study at University College, Southampton, but was advised to stay at school and apply to Oxford or Cambridge in a few years.

He sat the Oxbridge examination when he was sixteen and was awarded a £30 a year exhibition to study mathematics at Magdalen College, Oxford; the money was not enough to live on, but he accepted nevertheless.

Although he had been accepted by a college he still needed to gain entry to the university as a whole, which meant passing exams including Greek – which had not been taught at Andover Grammar School.

Denning managed to teach himself enough of the subject to pass, and matriculated to Oxford in 1916.

In addition to his Magdalen Scholarship he gained a scholarship from Hampshire County Council worth £50 a year.

After arriving he made a favourable impression on Sir Herbert Warren, the president of Magdalen College, who upgraded the exhibition to a Demyship of £80 a year and arranged for the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths to give Denning a £30 a year scholarship.

Despite military training in the early morning and evening, Denning worked hard at his studies, and obtained a First in Mathematical Moderations, the first half of his mathematics degree, in June 1917.

Denning was told he would be ineligible to serve in the Armed Forces because of a systolic heart murmur, which he believed the doctor diagnosed because he was tired of sending young men off to die.

He successfully appealed against the decision, and enlisted on 14 August 1917 as a cadet in the Hampshire Regiment before being sent to the Royal Engineers Oxford University Officer Training Corps.

He trained at Newark and was temporarily commissioned as a second lieutenant on 17 November 1917.

Although he was old enough to serve in the armed forces, regulations meant that he was not allowed to serve in France until he was nineteen.

In March 1918, the German Army advanced closer to Amiens and Paris and Denning's unit was sent to France to help stop the advance.

He was called to the bar of England and Wales in 1923 and became a King's Counsel in 1938.

Under continuous shell fire for three months, the company and the 38th (Welsh) Infantry Division held their section of the line, with a unit under Denning's command building a bridge to allow infantry to advance over the River Ancre.

Denning went two days without sleep while building these bridges; shortly after one was completed, a German aeroplane dropped a bomb on it, forcing them to start again.

The unit advanced over the River Ancre and the Canal du Nord, but Denning fell ill with influenza and was in hospital for the last few days of the war.

When writing of his experiences in World War I in The Family Story, Denning summed up his war service with characteristic pithiness in just four words: "I did my bit".

Denning became a judge in 1944 when he was appointed to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, and transferred to the King's Bench Division in 1945.

He was made a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1948 after less than five years in the High Court.

He became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1957 and after five years in the House of Lords returned to the Court of Appeal as Master of the Rolls in 1962, a position he held for twenty years.

In retirement he wrote several books and continued to offer opinions on the state of the common law through his writing and his position in the House of Lords.

Margaret Thatcher said that Denning was "probably the greatest English judge of modern times".

One of Lord Denning's successors as Master of the Rolls, Lord Bingham, called him "the best known and best loved judge in our history".

Denning's appellate work in the Court of Appeal did not concern criminal law.

Mark Garnett and Richard Weight argue that Denning was a conservative Christian who "remained popular with morally conservative Britons who were dismayed at the postwar rise in crime and who, like him, believed that the duties of the individual were being forgotten in the clamour for rights. He had a more punitive than redemptive view of criminal justice, as a result of which he was a vocal supporter of corporal and capital punishment."

However, he changed his stance on capital punishment in later life.

Denning became one of the highest profile judges in England in part because of his report on the Profumo affair.

He was known for his bold judgments running counter to the law at the time.

During his 38-year career as a judge, he made large changes to the common law, particularly while in the Court of Appeal, and although some of his decisions were overturned by the House of Lords several of them were confirmed by Parliament, which passed statutes in line with his judgments.

Appreciated for his role as "the people's judge" and his support for the individual, Denning attracted attention for his occasionally flexible attitude to the common law principle of precedent.

He commented controversially about the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four.