[1] Although his mother came from a Protestant Home Rule background, all were involved in the 1914 UVF gun running, the seven-year-old Harford being a dummy casualty for first-aid practice.

[1] He was married in 1939 to Dorothy Mabel Brayshaw Crofts (divorced 1952); in 1955 to Mary Eleanor Fischer (dissolved 1966) and finally to Rosalind Roberts Dimond.

His first salaried employment was with the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, whose wife Edith was a London political hostess, and whose influence on prominent Labour Party politician Ramsay MacDonald (who became prime minister) was held by some to be suspect.

From 1935 until 1939, Hyde was librarian and private secretary to the marquess in his "appeasement" period, hired specifically to research the family papers and write its history.

He was then commissioned in the intelligence corps (MI6) and engaged in counter-espionage work in the United States under William Stephenson, the director of British Security Coordination in the Western Hemisphere.

[1] After the war, he became assistant editor of the Law Reports until 1947, and was legal adviser to the British Lion Film Corporation, then managed by Alexander Korda, up to 1949.

His maiden speech was on the contentious subject of the difficulty of enforcement of Northern Ireland maintenance orders in Great Britain, and the consequent problem of border-hopping husbands.

He was a UK delegate to the Council of Europe Consultative Assembly in Strasbourg from 1952 to 1955, majoring on simplifying European visa and border controls.

He was also an incessant traveller; a visit in 1958 to East Germany and Czechoslovakia got him into difficulty with political exiles, when he lamely defended himself saying, "There are terrible things going on.

"[7] Hyde did make efforts to have the decision overturned by Unionist Party headquarters on procedural grounds but he had no high-level political support.

[8] In 1970, Hyde wrote the first social history of homosexuality in Great Britain and Ireland, The Other Love, perhaps his most memorable and long-lasting work.

With its rich and detailed narratives, "fusing legal knowledge with illustrative anecdotage," it was the most extensive book to date on the subject.

[1] He also wrote a number of biographies of legal and political figures and books on spying, notably Room 3603 (1963) about Sir William Stephenson and the wartime efforts of British Security Coordination.

He continued his work opposing capital punishment while he published two articles in May 1965 in the Sunday People to advance the cause of homosexual law reform.

The second entitled "The Million Women", appeared after the House of Commons had rejected Leo Abse's first Bill, showing "itself more reactionary than the Lords", as he stated.

That article dealt with lesbians whose "association" was not regarded as an offence, and "Sappho the poetess who wrote passionate verses about the lovely maidens who gathered round her."