[5] Following the end of the war, he transferred to the permanent Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during April 1947 in the rank of lieutenant seniority from 1 August 1945.

He served as Attorney-General for England and Wales and Northern Ireland from 1979 to 1987 under Margaret Thatcher; his was the longest unbroken tenure of the office since the eighteenth century.

After a two-hour submission by Havers, the Attorney-General, a 90-minute lunch break and a further 40 minutes of legal discussion, Justice Boreham rejected the diminished responsibility plea and the expert testimonies of the four psychiatrists, insisting that the case should be dealt with by a jury.

Havers drew controversy at the outset of the trial, when he said of Sutcliffe's victims in his introductory speech: "Some were prostitutes, but perhaps the saddest part of the case is that some were not.

[12] The trial lasted a fortnight and, despite the efforts of his counsel James Chadwin, QC, Sutcliffe was found guilty of murder on all counts and sentenced to life imprisonment.

[14] In the case of the Guildford Four, the Director of Public Prosecutions was found to have suppressed alibi evidence that supported Gerry Conlon and Paul Hill's claims of innocence.

[15] The Director of Public Prosecutions, for which Havers was acting, was also found to have suppressed confessions by Provisional IRA bombers, known as the Balcombe Street Gang, claiming responsibility for the Guildford and Woolwich bombings.

[18] A master at King's College School, Frank Miles, was in bed in his apartment in the same house, and was unhurt because he had left his sitting room.

When discovered, Miles was described as 'like Lear in the storm scene'; he took a bottle of champagne into school the next day, to celebrate his deliverance with his pupils.

[4] On 1 April 1992, he died from heart failure at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London at the age of 69, after falling ill while working in his office.