Lilah Constance, Lady Manningham-Buller OBE,[2] daughter of Charles Cavendish, 3rd Baron Chesham and granddaughter of Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster.

[1] He was briefly Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works in the caretaker government of Winston Churchill before it lost power in the general election of 1945, and became a King's Counsel in 1947.

[1] When Churchill regained power in 1951 Manningham-Buller was knighted and became Solicitor-General; in 1954 he was sworn of the Privy Council and became Attorney General for England and Wales.

[1] In 1957, Manningham-Buller prosecuted suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams for the murder of two elderly widows in Eastbourne, Edith Alice Morrell and Gertrude Hullett.

Not only was there seemingly little reason to enter it (Adams was not suffering from ill health), but the Hullett charge was deemed by many to be the stronger of the two cases.

Mr Justice Patrick Devlin, the presiding judge, in his post-trial book termed Manningham-Buller's act "an abuse of process".

[6] Devlin also criticised Manningham-Buller for his uncharacteristic weakness at a crucial moment in the Morrell case: evidence (some nurses' notebooks) that had gone missing from the Director of Public Prosecutions's files, turned up in the hands of the defence on the second day of the trial.

They were subsequently used by the defence to throw doubt on the accuracy of the testimony of various nurses who had worked with Adams and who had questioned his methods and intentions.

[1] Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannam of Scotland Yard, the chief investigator, suspected political interference due to Manningham-Buller's membership of a government, which had no interest in seeing a doctor hang.

[7] Indeed, on 8 November 1956, Manningham-Buller himself had handed a copy of Hannam's 187-page report to the President of the British Medical Association (BMA), effectively the doctors' trade union in Britain.

[7] Subsequently, on 28 November 1956, Labour MPs Stephen Swingler and Hugh Delargy gave notice of two questions to be answered in the House of Commons on 3 December regarding Manningham-Buller's contacts with the General Medical Council (GMC) and BMA regarding the Adams case in the previous six months.

Manningham-Buller was absent on the day in question but gave a written reply stating he had "had no communications with the General Medical Council within the last six months."

Charles Hewett, Hannam's assistant in the investigation, has described how both officers were astounded at Manningham-Buller's decision to charge John Bodkin Adams with the murder of Mrs. Morrell, whose body had been cremated.

They had a son and three daughters:[13] Manningham-Buller died in Knoydart, in the Scottish Highlands, on 7 September 1980, aged 75, and was interred in Deene, Northamptonshire.