Popular QC who enjoyed the cut and thrust of advocacy in high-profile trials for more than 50 years
MICHAEL CORKERY, who has died aged 92, was a formidable barrister who practised for 60 years; with a gift for friendship that matched his forensic skills, he was one of the most popular QCS of his day as well as one of the most admired.
Even those courtroom opponents who found themselves losing to Corkery often admitted that the experience had been entertaining. More usefully, his wit and charm endeared him to juries, who found him refreshingly uncondescending despite his obvious intellect. Unlike many members of his profession he was never afflicted by pomposity, in or out of court, however eminent he became.
For much of his career he specialised in prosecution, serving as First Senior Prosecuting Counsel to the Crown from 1977 to 1981, and he took part in some of the most sensational trials of the 20th century. In 1963 he was part of Mervyn Griffith-jones’s prosecution team for the controversial trial of the society osteopath Stephen Ward on charges of living off immoral earnings and procuring, which culminated in Ward being found guilty
having taken an overdose of barbiturates that would prove fatal.
In 1974 Corkery prosecuted the Labour MP John Stonehouse, who had faked his death and fled to Australia after committing various financial frauds. Stonehouse, defending himself, argued that he had suffered a sudden nervous breakdown; but Corkery convinced the jury that, as he asserted in his opening address, “this is the story of a crime where a very able and talented man over a period of at least four months covers up his disappearance and spins a web of deception in which almost every single strand is fashioned with ingenuity and great ability.”
He also had a surprising amount of success, in the post-chatterley era, in successfully prosecuting cases involving obscene books. In 1971 he prosecuted the British publisher of The Little Red Schoolbook, a Danish publication that offered advice to schoolchildren on various matters, including sex.
John Mortimer, appearing for the defence, argued that a 200-page book should not be outlawed on the strength of one short section on sex, but the court accepted Corkery’s argument that corruptible readers could too easily find the relevant section because the book contained an itemised table of contents. “What does give cause for wonder is that the publisher of a book of this kind should escape with a fine of £50 and costs of £110,” a Daily Telegraph editorial pronounced.
In 1966 he successfully prosecuted John Calder and Marion Boyars, the British publishers of Hubert Selby Jr’s graphically violent and sexual novel, Last Exit to Brooklyn. For the first time in an obscenity trial the prosecution called expert witnesses to testify to the book’s corrupting tendencies, including such moral exemplars as Robert Maxwell.
Between 1984 and 1986 he prosecuted a number of men accused of involvement in the Brink’s-mat gold bullion robbery, often referred to as “the crime of the century”. He broke down one defendant’s alibi evidence so thoroughly that Robin Simpson QC, for the defence, told the jury he “wouldn’t waste your time or mine” in trying to salvage it.
Corkery was not always successful in his prosecutions. In one of the most contentious trials of the 1990s, he failed to secure the conviction for manslaughter of a man who had allowed his 10-year-old son to ride his motorbike in a park, striking and killing an 11-year-old boy.
Corkery came to favour criminal defence work in his later years at the Bar. Although as a prosecutor he was responsible for hundreds of incarcerations, he claimed that he did not relish the idea of passing sentence on people and so never sat as a judge, even on a part-time basis; in any case, the cut and thrust of advocacy was his métier.
In 1998 Trevor Grove, the former editor of The Sunday Telegraph, published The Juryman’s Tale, an account of a kidnapping trial at which he had been a juror and Corkery was a defence counsel. Grove presented a memorable portrait of Corkery’s Rumpole-esque manner: “His wig was slightly askew and he had a watchchain looped across his tummy. He wanted us, the jury, to know that we were the inheritors of an 800-year-old tradition that went back to Henry II.”
Corkery, Grove reported, ingratiated himself with the jury using jokes (“We are all a bundle of prejudices. Remember WC Fields: ‘I’m not prejudiced. I hate everybody equally’”) and historical titbits, such as an etymological diversion on the origins of the word “kidnapping”.
He also reported how Corkery, who had by then been nearly 50 years at the Bar, made an asset of his age by introducing a historical perspective. He suggested to the jury that although his client was not testifying, they should not draw the conventional inferences from his silence, as “within my mother’s lifetime” defendants used never to be allowed into the witness box for fear of their being manipulated by smart lawyers. Nevertheless, Corkery’s client was found guilty.
Michael Corkery was born in London on May 20 1926, the son of Charles Corkery, who worked in the law, and his wife, Nellie. He attended Bickley Hall preparatory school in Kent, where aged 12 he bowled to Don Bradman when the Australia cricket team visited, and the King’s School, Canterbury, where he was rugby captain.
He joined the Grenadier Guards in 1944 on leaving school, then was commissioned in the Welsh Guards and stationed in Germany, where he developed a taste for helping to defend court-martialed soldiers. He decided his future lay in the law, and was called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn in 1949. He took silk in 1981.
His success as a barrister was largely due to an immense capacity for hard work and unusual mastery of his briefs, although he always maintained an air of insouciance, and outside the courtroom was happier telling a risqué joke than discussing a point of law.
He enjoyed shooting and sailing, and took on the lion’s share of the cooking duties in the family home, finding it therapeutic after a day in court; when entertaining he would end dinner by cooking crêpes Suzette, which took him an hour on his archaic but much-prized equipment. He owned a house near Goodwood as well as his London home and, being practical, took pride in doing as many maintenance jobs as possible himself.
In 1999 he and his great friend and colleague, John Mathew QC, held a joint “100th birthday party” to celebrate their having sat alongside each other at the same desks in the same room at the same chambers, 5 Paper Buildings, for 50 years. Work kept him young – one colleague noted that receiving the offer of a brief had a visibly rejuvenating effect on him – and he continued to appear in court until 2009, when he was 82. His three great loves were his Inn (he was Treasurer of Lincoln’s Inn in 1992), his family and the Garrick Club.
Michael Corkery married, in 1967, Juliet Foulkes, who survives him with their son and daughter.