Standing as a Labour candidate in the 1945 general election, he finally entered Parliament as a life peer in 1978, eventually voting with the Liberal Democrats.
[2] He was the oldest son of St John Hutchinson, KC, a barrister, and his wife, Mary Barnes, a writer and fringe member of the Bloomsbury Group.
[5] He was the Labour Party candidate for the constituency of Westminster Abbey at the 1945 general election; he canvassed 10 Downing Street and when informed that the "tenant" (Prime Minister Winston Churchill) was out of the country, he addressed the staff.
[8] He led the defence of director Michael Bogdanov in 1982 against a charge of gross indecency in the play The Romans in Britain by Howard Brenton.
[9] The prosecution withdrew after Hutchinson demonstrated that Ross-Cornes could have witnessed the actor's thumb protruding from his fist and the case was ended after the Attorney-General entered a nolle prosequi.
[16] In 1940, Hutchinson married his first wife, actress Peggy Ashcroft, with whom he had two children:[17] He had six grandchildren including Emily Loizeau.
His musical choices were: "Don't Have any More Missus Moore," by Lily Morris, "Dance of the Miller's Wife" from The Three-Cornered Hat by de Falla, "Tea for Two" by Teddy Wilson, "Ah Dite alla giovine" by Giuseppe Verdi, "The Rumble" from West Side Story, the Andante from Piano concerto in C major by Mozart, "L'autre bout du Monde" by Emily Loizeau and the Sonata Opus 110 by Beethoven.