Alan King-Hamilton

Myer Alan Barry King-Hamilton QC (9 December 1904 – 23 March 2010) was a British barrister and judge who was best known for hearing numerous high-profile cases at the Old Bailey during the 1960s and 1970s. These included the trial of Janie Jones in 1974 and the 1977 blasphemous libel trial against Gay News and its editor, Denis Lemon, for publishing "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name", a poem by James Kirkup.

Early life and career King-Hamilton was born Myer Alan Barry Harris in West Hampstead, London on 9 December 1904, the youngest child and only son of solicitor Alfred Harris (1871-1959) and Constance Clyde Druiff (1877-1963). His father changed the family surname to King-Hamilton in 1916. King-Hamilton attended York House prep school and briefly The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, but completed his schooling at Bishop's Stortford College. He read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, receiving a third-class BA degree in 1927. He later commented that "it is not essential or even important to get a First, or even a Second, to succeed at the Bar." Hamilton took his MA in 1929, the same year in which he was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple.

In 1935, he married Rosalind Irene Ellis (1906–1991), with whom he had two daughters.

Janie Jones trial King-Hamilton also presided over the 1973 trial of Janie Jones, a pop singer and madame, on charges of procuring women to become prostitutes, blackmail and perverting the course of justice. After the jury convicted her on the first and third charges, King-Hamilton sentenced Jones to seven years imprisonment, describing her as "the most evil woman he had ever met".

Peter Hain trial In 1976 Peter Hain, then leader of the Young Liberals, was charged with the robbery of £490 from a branch of Barclays Bank in Putney. He was acquitted on the ground of mistaken identity and later accused King-Hamilton of bias against him. He would later say "It was a difficult summing up to prepare but I felt as if I had an influence over my left shoulder, I felt that I was being guided to put it helpfully to the jury... the previous prosecution was back in the early 1920s and did not give me much help."

After retiring in 1979, King-Hamilton acted as an arbitrator in the Channel 4 television series Case on Camera.

Death King-Hamilton died on 23 March 2010, at the age of 105.