Jeremy Hutchinson, son of Mary Barnes Hutchinson, was born in London in 1915. He graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford, before studying law and going on to become the greatest British criminal barrister of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Jeremy’s skill as a cross-examiner soon became legendary; it is said that he provided a partial inspiration for John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey. 

From the sex and spying scandals which contributed to Harold Macmillan’s resignation in 1963 and the subsequent fall of the Conservative government, to the fight against literary censorship through his defence of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fanny Hill, Hutchinson was involved in many of the great trials of the period. He defended George Blake, Christine Keeler, Great Train robber Charlie Wilson, Kempton Bunton (the only man successfully to ‘steal’ a picture from the National Gallery), art ‘faker’ Tom Keating, and Howard Marks who, in a sensational defence, was acquitted of charges relating to the largest importation of cannabis in British history. He also prevented the suppression of Bernardo Bertolucci’s film Last Tango in Paris and successfully defeated the prosecution of the director of the play Romans in Britain for pornography. He retired from the bar in 1984.