Alfred Thompson Denning, Baron Denning

Alfred Thompson Denning, Baron Denning lived from January 23, 1899 to March 5, 1999 and was an English barrister and judge. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1923 and became a King's Counsel in 1938. He became a judge in 1944, was made a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1948, became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1957, and returned to the Court of Appeal as Master of the Rolls in 1962, a position he held for twenty years. During his thirty-eight-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 were later confirmed by Parliament through statute. Margaret Thatcher called him probably the greatest English judge of modern times, and his successor as Master of the Rolls, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, called him the best known and best loved judge in English history. He became one of the highest profile judges in England in part because of his report on the Profumo affair, and he was known for bold judgments that ran counter to the law of the time.