The outbreak of the Second World War cut short his studies and he refused to apply for a post in the Judge Advocate General's office in 1939.

Clothier joined the Royal Signals and served with the 51st (Highland) Division at the Second Battle of El Alamein, where he was responsible for laying communication lines and setting up radio equipment.

He undertook deception duties in a radio truck and made transmissions from unmanned positions in English and Scottish accents to confuse the enemy.

He became a popular pianist in the officers' mess and acquired a love of flying when an American pilot offered a flight and landed on a road by a Sicilian village where they had an impromptu swim.

In 1943 Clothier was transferred to Washington, D.C. where he served as a staff officer, sitting on committees dealing with technical developments and radio-frequency allocation.

However, with his command of technical details, he widened his practice to personal injury, professional negligence and commercial work, including corporate crime.

Clothier acquired a speciality in cases that involved adverse reactions to drugs – he advised ICI over reparations for patients who had suffered side-effects from taking Eraldin and recommended that it create a scheme of full compensation.

When serving on the bench, Clothier was a legal assessor to the General Medical and Dental councils and a member of the Royal Commission on National Health.

Clothier expressed himself to be happy with the Office that he inherited from Sir Idwal Pugh: 'coming to my task without previous close experience with the work of either Parliament or the Executive, I have been much impressed by both'.

Clothier continued the practice of arousing public awareness of the Office, eagerly accepting invitations to talk to groups in different parts of the country and determined that people should regard the Ombudsman as fundamental feature of the constitution.

[5] In the first statutory extension of the Ombudsman's remit since 1967, the Office was permitted to investigate the actions of consular staff abroad in their duties towards United Kingdom citizens.

Clothier was therefore able to attribute part of the losses incurred by the farmers to maladministration and considered it appropriate for the departments concerned to offer ex gratia compensation.

Clothier observed that, although it was not the duty of the Home Office to actively look for miscarriages of justice, the circumstances of the case made the matter wholly exceptional.

Clothier concluded that a miscarriage of justice where a person loses his or her liberty was 'one of the gravest matters which can occupy the attention of a civilised society'.

Clothier found it problematic that some half of all complaints he received related wholly or partly to actions arising from the exercise of clinical judgment, a matter on which he was not empowered to investigate.

[12] One of the most serious cases investigated by Clothier concerned a complaint from a mother that her baby was born dead due to a catalogue of failures in maternity care at the hospital.

Clothier concluded that it was 'difficult to imagine a more serious failure in the service' as the health authority admitted that the baby could have survived if reasonable care had been given to the mother.

Revelations of miscarriages of justice caused anger, and the Police Federation passed votes of no-confidence in the Authority and himself as chairman on four occasions.

When the police used, as Clothier admitted, excessive force to break up a hippy peace convoy near Stonehenge, he did not recommend that a single disciplinary charge be brought against the 1,363 officers involved.

When the police forcibly broke up a student demonstration in Manchester in 1985 and 100 complaints were received, officers were not required by the Authority to name colleagues who had behaved improperly.

Clothier followed his term at the Police Complaints Authority with appointments to the Senior Salaries Review Body from 1989 to 1995, as Vice-President of the Interception of Communications Tribunal between 1986 and 1996 and Chairman of the Committee on Ethics of Gene Therapy between 1990 and 1992.

[1][2][3][4] In 1994 at the age of 74, Clothier was appointed to head an inquiry into how a nurse, Beverley Allitt, who was later diagnosed as an untreatable psychopath, was able to kill four children and attack nine others at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital.

Clothier trenchantly refused to hold a public inquiry, earning him vociferous hostility from both the victims' families and widespread criticism from the media.

Clothier was asked about the similar case of Dr Harold Shipman in 2000 and explained that few people could be found to criticise colleagues with whom they had to work the next day, let alone voice suspicions about them committing very grave crimes.

[15] This recommended radical changes, including the introduction of ministerial government, abolition of the Bailiff’s role as president of the States Assembly, and an ombudsman.