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GAZETTE
candidature in the Garston constituency in
Liverpool, then a safe Conservative seat.
Thinking it would be prudent to say nothing
to the authorities at this early stage of
his undergraduate life, he slipped away to
Liverpool at midday on the selection day to
return the following day, hoping that his
absence would go unnoticed.
Unfortunately for him he was selected, it
became front-page news in the Oxford Mail
and he received the inevitable summons
from Censor Brook, but when a General
Election was called, Brook raised no
objection to his absence for three weeks of
the campaign. Failing to win the seat was
a mix blessing since it would have been
disastrous to his progress at Catz.
Alf had particular reasons to be grateful to
his tutor, Wilfrid Knapp when, at the end of
his first term, he learnt that he would have
sit an examination in French, a subject he
had never studied. Knapp coached him for
two hours every day, including Saturdays
and Sundays, and he duly passed with
flying colours.
When reminiscing with me about our days
at Catz, he said he looked back at them as
very happy if challenging. Given his history,
they were probably more challenging for
him than for most.
HONORARY FELLOW SIR
HUMPHREY POTTS (1950,
Law) was a High Court judge
from 1986 until 2001, when,
in one of his last cases on the
bench, he presided over the
trial of Jeffrey Archer for perjury.
The case arose from the
allegation that Lord Archer had
forged two diaries to support a false alibi
during his libel trial against the Daily Star
newspaper in 1987, when he won £500,000
damages over the report that he had paid the
prostitute Monica Coghlan for sex.
Potts, an admirably fair-minded yet nononsense
northerner, conducted the perjury
trial with impressive firmness and occasional
flashes of humour. Archer was found guilty
by the jury and sentenced to four years’
imprisonment – exceeding many lawyers’
predictions.
Francis Humphrey Potts was born in August
1931 and grew up in County Durham, where
his father farmed on the Lambton estate.
He attended the Royal Grammar School,
Newcastle — which was evacuated to Penrith
during the war — where his friends included
Peter Taylor, the future Lord Chief Justice, and
Geoffrey Bindman, the leading human rights
solicitor.
After reading Law at Catz, Potts
read for the Bar at Lincoln’s
Inn as a Tancred Student and
Cholmeley Scholar. He was called
in 1955, and entered chambers
at 51 Westgate Road, Newcastle,
which Taylor had joined the
previous year.
Potts did a mixture of criminal
and civil work, much of the latter involving
either insurance claims or litigation against
factories and the Coal Board. The Bar at
Newcastle was then relatively small but
enjoying a golden era and Potts was among a
quintet known as ‘The Lions of the North’.
Potts himself had a commanding presence
as an advocate and was utterly fearless in
his cross-examination. His capacity to sway a
jury lay in good part in the fact that he was
a transparently decent man, with a selfdeprecating
demeanour that was as endearing
as it was genuine. He disliked pretension and
long-windedness, and could never be accused
of either.
After taking Silk in 1971, Potts followed Taylor
down to London, and joined him at the set of
chambers headed by George (later Lord Justice)
Waller, QC, at 11 King’s Bench Walk in the
Temple. He became a Recorder the next year.
Following his appointment as a Judge of the
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