Sir William Aldous
Judge and keen equestrian who scotched an attempt to ban a TV interview with Dennis Nilsen
SIR WILLIAM ALDOUS, who has died on his 82nd birthday, was a Lord Justice of Appeal and a passionate supporter of equestrian sports. He enjoyed a long and distinguished career at the Bar as a specialist in intellectual property. As a judge of the Patents Court from 1988 to 1995, he made headlines in January 1993 when he supported the right of Central Television to broadcast extracts from an interview with the serial killer Dennis Nilsen, over which the Home Office was attempting to seek an injunction.
Nilsen, a civil servant, had been jailed for life in 1983 after being convicted of murdering six young men. In the interview, conducted at Albany prison on the Isle of Wight, he calmly described how he had cut up the bodies and how much he had enjoyed carrying his victims after he had killed them: “It was an expression of my power to lift and carry and have control. The dangling element of the limp limbs was an expression of [their] passivity.”
The interview, carried out in the presence of a clinical psychologist, a police superintendent and a detective chief inspector, was to form a sevenminute segment of a documentary, Murder in Mind, scheduled for screening on ITV’S late-night Viewpoint 93 slot.
The Home Office took out a writ, seeking an injunction banning screening on the grounds of the possible distress to victims’ families. Officials further claimed that permission had been granted for Nilsen to be interviewed for police training purposes only, so to broadcast it would infringe a section of the Copyright Act, which says copyright that resides with those who make the arrangements. The producers argued that the Home Office had been fully aware of their intention to broadcast, though they had agreed to make the film available for police use.
In an hour-long judgment, Aldous admitted that he had personally found the footage distressing, though he had not previously thought of himself as someone with a weak stomach, but he rejected the argument that the extracts should be banned because viewers might be distressed. “There is a potential educational benefit in allowing pictures of the interview to tell the story, rather than the spoken word,” he said. “I am aware of the possible distress, but the programme, having been made, is best seen and best seen with the extract in.”
Aldous’s judgment, upheld on appeal, was welcomed by broadcasters as reflecting a liberalising trend among judges. But in other judgements, Aldous made clear that there were limits to the freedom to publish. In 2000 he was one of three appeal court judges who ruled against The Sun, after a company controlled by Fayed on the day before their deaths – photographs that had been stolen and sold to the newspaper.
Aldous observed that although Fayed had given a fabricated account of the visit in the book Death of a Princess, there had been no need for The Sun to publish the photographs when the information they conveyed (that the visit had only lasted half an hour) could have been made available without infringing copyright. For the newspaper to describe its action as “fair dealing” was to “give honour to dishonour”. The judges held that there was no statutory defence of public interest to a breach of copyright.
William Aldous was born in Suffolk on March 17 1936, the son of Guy Aldous QC and Elizabeth (née Paul), and educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1960, he served as a junior counsel on intellectual property matters to the Department of Trade and Industry from 1972 to 1976, when he took silk.
He was head of chambers at 6 Pump Court from 1980 to 1988, when he was knighted, elevated to the High Court and appointed a judge of the Patents Court. In 1995 he was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal and sworn of the Privy Council. He retired from the bench in 2003, although he remained an arbitrator in intellectual property matters and was a member of the Gibraltar Court of Appeal until 2013.
Away from his legal career, Aldous was a keen rider to hounds. At Cambridge he had been a joint master of the University Drag Hounds for two seasons, riding out with them on Sundays, while hunting on Saturdays with the Suffolk Hunt.
In a 2015 article in a hunt newsletter he recalled Boxing Day meets at the Angel Square in Bury where, on one occasion, the hounds disappeared into the large crowd of hunt supporters to scavenge: “We moved off with no hounds, but they were all on within two hundred yards.”
Aldous’s father, also a keen huntsman, became a Master of the Essex & Suffolk Hunt in 1967 and Willie (as he was known to his hunting friends) went in as a Master to help him in 1970, serving until 1976. In later life he regularly followed the Essex & Suffolk on foot.
Aldous also became involved in eventing, serving in various posts including, from 2005, as chairman of British Eventing, leading the sport through difficult times as it dealt with losses incurred at the 2005 Windsor International Horse Trials.
In 2002 he caused a flurry of controversy when he said that he “resented” advice given the previous year by Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, that it would be inappropriate for judges to take part in “quasi-political” events such as the Countryside Alliance march planned for September in protest against “prejudiced attacks” on hunting.
While agreeing to follow Lord Woolf ’s advice, Aldous did not see any reason why judges should not take part in a lawful march, adding that he wanted his friends to know that his absence would not imply any lack of support. Besides, he pointed out, as his views were well known, there was no chance of his being asked to sit on a case involving hunting.
In his 2015 hunt newsletter article he wrote: “I am so pleased to see hunting thrive in spite of the ban.”
In 1960 he married Gill Henson, whom he had met at Cambridge. She was the daughter of Gino Henson, Master of the Blankney Hunt for many years, and would go on to serve as the main organiser of Stratford Hills Horse Trials. Her brother, Bill Henson, was for 16 years director of the Burghley Horse Trials.
She survives him with their son and two daughters
Sir William Aldous, born March 17 1936, died March 17 2018