Tony Arlidge KC, 1937 – 2023
Tony Arlidge KC, 1937-2023
“A giant of his generation” is an over-used phrase. Not today. Tony Arlidge KC was one of the most outstanding lawyers and advocates of his time, and history will be not just kind to but in awe of him. He had the full apparatus: fine mind, work ethic, advocacy skills, and charm. He was the last opponent one wanted, professionally. A jury ate out of his hand and he was terrifyingly effective. One could – I did – when prosecuting him have everything to cruise to a guilty verdict, right up to the unanimous acquittal. If he prosecuted he was deadly, too fair, too accommodating, too tuned in to the court. It made defending a nightmare. I know of what I speak. But Tone (as he was always known and called himself) was far more. Kind to his fingertips, self-mocking, funny, broad minded, he allowed the worried youngster at the Bar to spill out uncertainty and then he helped. Quietly and unfussily and consistently, he helped.
No finer after dinner speaker trod the boards when he was in his prime. “Let me tell you about the day Hitler bombed my sandpit” made an audience of hundreds cry with laughter until he sat down. “I can see a lot of ladies in the hall. I’ve changed my speech. It’s now I Was a Feminist Aged Eight” also went down in history. He conceived wrote and produced the biggest of the legendary Kalisher staged readings, “The Dunsinane Two: the trial of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth”. The Main Hall of the RCJ was full. He brought to the stage Derek Jacobi, Simon Russell Beale, Matthew McFadyen, and plenty more. Describing his major success as the casting of the then Anthony Hughes LJ, Tone dined out on “The hours I spent coaching him on his lines, the intonation, his stagecraft. What a diva. I wouldn’t mind but he only had to say ‘Court Rise.’ That’s all the usher does”.
One of his greatest talents was the speech from counsel’s bench about a judge, coming or going or promoted. When Brian Barker KC retired as Recorder of London Tone made The Speech. The cleverest, warmest, most perceptive character assassination was delivered in Number One court at the Old Bailey, standing room only and people listening from the Great Hall. His final four words reduced hundreds to tears: “Good luck, old friend.” Well here’s four more, from all of us: Thanks Tone. For everything.
