IT’S quite often the least well- known authors that turn up those nuggets of gold and prospector extraordinaire Thomas Grant QC certainly came up trumps with a 24-carat talk.

Having mined the case histories of arguably Britain’s most celebrated criminal law barrister, Grant has gone on to write a Sunday Times bestseller and then hit the promotional trail, winning many a plaudit along the way.

Jeremy Hutchinson, long since anointed Baron Hutchinson of Lullington, is now 101 years old and until Grant met him, had declined to write about the cause celebres he’d defended with such wit and panache.

But a near neighbour and himself a QC, although in Chancery rather than criminal law, Grant found a way in and the result, Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories, has turned out to be so much more than the sum of its parts.

The account of some of his biggest cases, among them the Profumo sex/spy scandal and the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trials of the 1960s, and even the 1950’s defence of actor Trevor Howard (who, even though he was subsequently exonerated, had undoubtedly been as drunk as a skunk at the wheel), together chart either the liberalisation of Britain or its moral decay.

Whichever way you would have it, Grant and what is essentially a potted social history of the latter half of the 20th century, leave you questioning the morality of advocacy and the vagaries of our judicial system.

That ambivalence was at the heart of the famous clashes between Mary Whitehouse and predominantly the BBC during the 1970s.

Grant said: “Jeremy had several encounters with her, beginning with the private prosecution she took out against (the production of) Last Tango in Paris and then a few years later, the private prosecution of The Romans of Britain, which was, by any measure, a terrible play.

“It turned out to be quite a funny, entertaining case, although (director) Bogdanov was charged with procuring an act of gross indecency and could have gone to prison for two years, so it was no joke for him.

“But Jeremy didn’t regard Mary Whitehouse as a ridiculous figure and in many ways she was a prophet of what was to come.” Nonetheless, his expert defence saved the day for Bogdanov and Whitehouse was sent packing.

Hutchinson also got the notorious T. Dan Smith, then leader of Newcastle City Council, off during his first prosecution for what were basically corruption charges.

Mention of this case touched a chord with one particular member of the Queen’s Hall audience – retired Hexham solicitor John Halliday.

“I was a pupil at the time and a member of the junior barrister’s team for the defence,” he said. “As such, I was in court for that first case against T. Dan Smith.

“I spent 50 years in the law, but never again did I see the power of advocacy I did during that case – Jeremy Hutchinson was extraordinary.

“But it was a power of advocacy that produced a perverse verdict, because T. Dan Smith was guilty and there followed another four or five years of him corrupting the people around him before he finally went to prison.”

Yes, great advocacy could lead to results that, on paper, looked at best dubious, Thomas Grant agreed.

“But as a lawyer you can’t start judging whether your client is guilty or innocent, because once you have done that, you yourself are interfering in the judicial system.

“The arbiter is the jury, not the lawyer, and every defendant is entitled to a defence.”

Helen Compson