The idea of fundamental Human Rights is one in which I firmly believe
David Maxwell Fyfe
David Maxwell Fyfe was born in Edinburgh, 29 May 1900, the only son of William Thompson Fyfe and Isabella Fyfe (née Campbell).
He was educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh, and Balliol College, Oxford.
After Oxford he worked for the British Commonwealth Union and acted as political secretary to Sir Patrick Hannon, 1921-2 studying law in his spare time. He was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1922 and joined chambers in Liverpool the same year.
He was one of the youngest, at the age of thirty four, to become a King's Counsel, and in 1936 was made a Bencher of Gray's Inn. He served as Recorder of Oldham from 1936 - 42.
On 15 April 1925 he married Sylvia Margaret Harrison, with whom he had three daughters.
He first stood as a Conservative candidate in 1924, for Wigan, but it was not until a by-election in July 1935 that he was elected as Member of Parliament for Liverpool West Derby, winning the seat again at the General Election later that year.
In March 1939 he joined the Army Officers' Emergency Reserve and was later sent to the Judge Advocate-General's Department. However, he was badly injured during an air raid in September 1940.
He was Deputy Chairman, 1941-3, and Chairman, from 1943, of the Conservative Party's Central Committee on Post-War Problems.
In 1942 he was made Solicitor-General, a post he held until 1945, when he became Attorney-General.
At the Nuremberg Trials (1945-6) he served as British Deputy Chief Prosecutor heading the British legal team and conducting its day-to-day business in the courtroom, including his famous cross-examination of Hermann Goering.
From 1945 - 1951 he was a Shadow Minister of Labour serving as a member of the Industrial Policy Committee from 1946, and Chairman of a Committee of Inquiry into the Conservative Party, resulting in the Maxwell Fyfe Report.
In 1947 at the invitation of Winston Churchill he joined the Committee of the United European Movement, and was a member of the Assembly of the Council of Europe, where he was particularly involved in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights.
He was Home Secretary and cabinet minister for Welsh affairs from 1951 - 1954.
In 1954 he was made Lord Chancellor, a position he held until 1962.
He held honorary degrees from the Universities of Oxford, Manitoba, Edinburgh and Wales; was Rector of the University of St Andrews, from 1956; and Visitor of St Antony's College, Oxford, from 1953.
He was knighted in 1942 and made a Privy Counsellor in 1945. In 1953 he was created Knight Grand Cross in the Royal Victorian Order; Viscount Kilmuir in 1954; and 1st Earl of Kilmuir and Baron Fyfe of Dornoch in 1962.
He died at Withyham, Sussex, on 27th January 1967.
