We are very sorry to announce that our former head of chambers, His Honour Rod Denyer QC, died on 14 March 2020.
Rod was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1970, having been a student at LSE and having been present at the Grosvenor Square riots in 1968 against the Vietnam War. After moving to Bristol he taught at the University (educating a number who were later to come to St. John’s) before himself coming to the Bar. He was a stylish, and socially conscious, revolutionary. On his first day as a pupil in chambers he turned up dressed in a sharp Italian two piece suit, orange shirt and brown shoes, to be told he ‘looked like a solicitor’. Thereafter the shirts were toned down a touch, and the suit became a coloured stripe or chalk-stripe, decorated with cigarette ash on the cuff.
He developed his practice, in crime and general common law, but progressively tending towards personal injury work, originally at Guildhall Chambers and then at St John’s where he took silk in 1990. In silk he practised primarily in crime, and served a five-year stretch as Head of Chambers in the 1990s. Throughout he was on hand to offer wise advice to those who wanted or needed it; enjoyed chambers lunches at cordon bleu restaurants in the days when this was not only possible but fashionable; and regularly turned out as a key member of St. John’s cricket team’s feared pace attack.
A published author, besides a number of articles he produced a book on Children and Personal Injury Litigation for Butterworths, and a volume on Case Management in Criminal Trials for Hart. He was also a member of the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee.
His progression through the legal ranks was continuous: Assistant Recorder (as was) in 1985; and Recorder in 1990. He was elected a Bencher of Inner Temple in 1996, and was appointed a Circuit Judge in 2002, sitting in Gloucester and Cardiff then returning to Bristol, and becoming the Designated Civil Judge for Bristol in 2010 before retiring in 2017.
Our thoughts are with Rod’s family and his many friends at this time. He is sadly missed.