Following his resignation in 1926 to allow Margaret Bondfield to take a seat in Parliament, Hastings returned to his work as a barrister, and was even more successful than before his entry into the House of Commons.

[11] Hastings was made a scout, a duty he thoroughly enjoyed; it meant that he got to the targeted farms first, and had time to steal chickens and other food before the Royal Military Police arrived (as looting was a criminal offence).

[15] The examinations required to become a barrister were not particularly difficult or expensive, but once a student passed all the exams he would be expected to pay the then-enormous sum of £100 (equivalent to approximately £13,700 in 2015[16]) when he was called to the bar and Hastings was literally penniless.

[15] As soon as he joined the Middle Temple, Hastings began saving money for his call to the bar, starting with half a crown from the sale of his Queen's South Africa Medal to a pawnbroker.

[20] Hastings was lucky: the first case he saw involved Rufus Isaacs, Henry Duke and Edward Carson, three of the most distinguished English barristers of the early 20th century.

[20][21] At the start of the court vacation in August 1904, Hastings decided that it would be best to find a tenancy in a more prestigious set of chambers; Corbet dealt with only two or three cases a year,[19] and solicitors were unlikely to give briefs to a barrister of whom they had never heard.

Sztaray was known to possess large amounts of valuable jewellery and to be married to a rich Hungarian nobleman, and assuming that the crouching man was a burglar the driver immediately called the police.

"[34] Power told the police that the letter had been written by a friend of his called John Williams, who he claimed had visited Sztaray's house to burgle it before killing the policeman and fleeing.

[16][45] On independent advice, he contacted Frederick Handel Booth, a noted Liberal Member of Parliament who was chairman of the Yorkshire Iron and Coal Company and had led the government inquiry into the Marconi scandal.

[48] While both Rigby Smith and Douglas Hogg were highly respected barristers, Booth's cross-examination by Hastings was so skilfully done that the jury took only ten minutes to find that he had been fraudulent; they awarded Gruban £4,750 (about £336,200 in 2015).

[50] His first major case as a King's Counsel was representing a Colonel Bersey at the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Women's Royal Air Force.

[55] Robert Sievier was a well-known horse racing journalist and owner with a reputation for brushes with the law and underhanded dealings, having previously been tried for blackmail and acquitted on a technicality.

[56] In 1913 he accused Richard Wootton, a noted trainer of racehorses, of ordering his jockeys to withdraw from races if he had bet on another horse so as to allow him to make large amounts of money.

[74] Hastings argued that because the Irish Free State was an independent nation the British laws governing it, such as the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920, were effectively repealed.

[76] The government was forced to introduce a bill to Parliament giving itself retrospective immunity for having exceeded its authority, and the whole incident was a political and legal triumph for the party and for Hastings personally.

[86] The Prime Minister said that he felt they should go through with the case now they had started, but Hastings suggested that a member of the Treasury Counsel appear at Bow Street Magistrates' Court and withdraw the prosecution.

[87] On 30 September Sir Kingsley Wood, a Conservative MP, asked the Prime Minister in Parliament whether he had instructed the Director of Public Prosecutions to withdraw the case.

[81] The Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin privately wrote to MacDonald offering to withdraw the motion of censure in exchange for the government's support for the appointment of a Select Committee.

It was suggested that the police evidence was perjured, and as a result the Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks instructed Sir Archibald Bodkin, the Director of Public Prosecutions, to investigate the possibility of perjury.

[99] Bodkin had Metropolitan Police Commissioner William Horwood appoint Chief Inspector Collins, one of his most experienced CID officers, to investigate the claims and interview Savidge.

[100] The next day, two police officers (Inspector Collins and Sergeant Clarke) and one policewoman (Lilian Wyles) called at Savidge's workplace and took her to Scotland Yard, where she was questioned.

Plender was one of the most important and reliable accountants in Britain, and under cross-examination stated that it was routine for firms "of the very highest repute" to use secret reserves in calculating profit without declaring it.

Mrs Barney, who led a dissolute life of partying and drug-taking, was accused of shooting her lover in the Knightsbridge mews house they shared; she insisted that her gun had gone off by accident in a struggle.

He appeared at the Magistrates' Court, where he cross-examined the forensic scientist Sir Bernard Spilsbury[117] and at a three-day trial in the Old Bailey where Hastings was described by Peter Cotes in his book about the case as "the star performer".

[citation needed] At the Old Bailey one of the principal crown witnesses was firearms expert Robert Churchill, who testified that the trigger of Mrs Barney's gun had a strong pull.

The judge (Mr Justice Humphreys) described Hastings' final address as "certainly one of the finest speeches I have ever heard at the Bar" and Elvira Barney was found not guilty both of murder and manslaughter.

[120] The case opened at the Royal Courts of Justice on 5 November 1934 in front of Lord Hewart, with Hastings representing Mosley, and Norman Birkett The Star.

[121] Hastings countered that The Star was effectively accusing Mosley of high treason, and said that "there is really no defence to this action...I do ask for such damages as will mark [the jury's] sense of the injustice which has been done to Sir Oswald".

[127] In 1930 he wrote Slings and Arrows, which never made it to the West End because when his family, who were familiar with the play, attended the shows, they read out the lines of the characters in bored and dreary voices just before the actors themselves spoke.

[134] One was a high-profile case in November and December 1946 in which he was engaged by the Newark Advertiser in defence of a libel action brought by Harold Laski, who was seeking to clear his name from the newspaper's claim that he had called for socialism "even if it means violence".