Reginald Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount Dilhorne
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Reginald Edward Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount Dilhorne, (1 August 1905 – 7 September 1980), known as Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, Bt, from 1954 to 1962 and as The Lord Dilhorne from 1962 to 1964, was an English lawyer and
Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...
politician. He served as
Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor, formally titled Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom. The lord chancellor is the minister of justice for England and Wales and the highest-ra ...
from 1962 to 1964.


Background and education

Born in
Amersham Amersham ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, in the Chiltern Hills, northwest of central London, south-east of Aylesbury and north-east of High Wycombe. Amersham is part of the London commuter belt. There ar ...
, Buckinghamshire, Manningham-Buller was the only son of Sir Mervyn Manningham-Buller, 3rd Baronet, grandson of Sir Edward Manningham-Buller, 1st Baronet, of Dilhorne Hall, Staffordshire, a junior member of the Yarde-Buller family headed by Baron Churston. His mother was the Hon. Lilah Constance, Lady Manningham-Buller , daughter of Charles Cavendish, 3rd Baron Chesham and granddaughter of
Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster, (13 October 1825 – 22 December 1899), styled Viscount Belgrave between 1831 and 1845, Earl Grosvenor between 1845 and 1869, and known as The Marquess of Westminster between 1869 and 1874, was an ...
. His uncle's seat of Dilhorne Hall having passed to an heiress ineligible for the baronetcy, Manningham-Buller grew up in
Northamptonshire Northamptonshire ( ; abbreviated Northants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Leicestershire, Rutland and Lincolnshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshi ...
. (Although pronounced "Dill-horn" by locals in later years, he preferred the older pronunciation of "Dill-urn".) He was educated at
Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...
, where he caused a fellow pupil to be expelled for making advances to another boy. He then attended
Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College ( ) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by Bishop of Winchester William of Waynflete. It is one of the wealthiest Oxford colleges, as of 2022, and ...
, where he took a Third in Law, before being called to the Bar by the
Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional association for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practice as a barrister in England and Wa ...
in 1927.


Political career

Manningham-Buller was elected to the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...
in a 1943 by-election as member of parliament (MP) for
Daventry Daventry ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in the West Northamptonshire unitary authority area of Northamptonshire, England, close to the border with Warwickshire. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 Census, Daventry had a populati ...
. He was briefly Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works in the caretaker government of
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (Winston Churchill in the Second World War, ...
before it lost power in the general election of 1945, and became a
King's Counsel A King's Counsel (Post-nominal letters, post-nominal initials KC) is a senior lawyer appointed by the monarch (or their Viceroy, viceregal representative) of some Commonwealth realms as a "Counsel learned in the law". When the reigning monarc ...
in 1947. In 1950, his seat became Northamptonshire South.


Law officer of the Crown

When Churchill regained power in 1951 Manningham-Buller was knighted and became
Solicitor-General A solicitor general is a government official who serves as the chief representative of the government in courtroom proceedings. In systems based on the English common law that have an attorney general or equivalent position, the solicitor general ...
; in 1954 he was sworn of the Privy Council and became
Attorney General for England and Wales His Majesty's Attorney General for England and Wales is the chief legal adviser to the sovereign and Government in affairs pertaining to England and Wales as well as the highest ranking amongst the law officers of the Crown. The attorney gener ...
. In 1956 he succeeded his father as fourth Baronet.


John Bodkin Adams prosecution

In 1957, Manningham-Buller prosecuted suspected
serial killer A serial killer (also called a serial murderer) is a person who murders three or more people,An offender can be anyone: * * * * * (This source only requires two people) with the killings taking place over a significant period of time in separat ...
Dr John Bodkin Adams for the murder of two elderly widows in
Eastbourne Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. It is also a non-metropolitan district, local government district with Borough status in the United Kingdom, bor ...
, Edith Alice Morrell and Gertrude Hullett. The jury acquitted Adams on the Morrell charge after deliberating for less than an hour. Manningham-Buller controversially entered a ''
nolle prosequi , abbreviated or , is legal Latin meaning "to be unwilling to pursue".Nolle prosequi
. refe ...
'' regarding 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". 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. Manningham-Buller claimed he had not seen them before but failed to halt their admission as evidence, or ask for time to acquaint himself with their contents. 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. This damaged the prosecution tremendously, fatally scuppering the case. Manningham-Buller's handling of the case later provoked questions in the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...
. Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannam of
Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's London boroughs, 32 boroughs. Its name derives from the location of the original ...
, the chief investigator, suspected political interference due to Manningham-Buller's membership of a government, which had no interest in seeing a doctor hang.Cullen, 2006. 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 The British Medical Association (BMA) is a registered trade union and professional body for physician, doctors in the United Kingdom. It does not regulate or certify doctors, a responsibility which lies with the General Medical Council. The BMA ...
(BMA), effectively the doctors' trade union in Britain. This document – the prosecution's most valuable document – was in the hands of the defence, a situation that led the
Home Secretary The secretary of state for the Home Department, more commonly known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom and the head of the Home Office. The position is a Great Office of State, maki ...
, Gwilym Lloyd-George, to reprimand Manningham-Buller, stating that such documents should not even be shown to "
Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
or to individual Members". "I can only hope that no harm will result" since "the disclosure of this document is likely to cause me considerable embarrassment". 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 The General Medical Council (GMC) is a public body that maintains the official register of physician, medical practitioners within the United Kingdom. Its chief responsibility is to "protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the pu ...
(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." He avoided referring to the BMA directly (despite it being named in the questions) and therefore avoided lying, though it could be argued, still deliberately misled the House. Manningham-Buller then proceeded to launch an investigation into how his contact with the BMA had come to be known by the MPs. A leak from Scotland Yard was suspected and Hannam was reprimanded. 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. He believed that there were other cases against the doctor, where traces of drugs had been found in exhumed remains, which were more capable of proof. He also considered that a charge of manslaughter would have been more appropriate in the circumstances. He questioned the decision not to proceed further after Adams' acquittal and he believed that a calculating killer escaped justice as a result.
Home Office The Home Office (HO), also known (especially in official papers and when referred to in Parliament) as the Home Department, is the United Kingdom's interior ministry. It is responsible for public safety and policing, border security, immigr ...
pathologist Francis Camps suspected Adams of killing 163 patients.


''Lady Chatterley's Lover'' prosecution

'' Lady Chatterley's Lover'' was banned in 1928 but republished in 1960 by
Penguin Books Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the ...
. The decision was taken to prosecute Penguin under the new Obscene Publications Act. Bernard Levin criticised the decision thus: "It is surely going to be difficult for the prosecution to find anybody taken seriously by the literary or academic worlds to swear that publication of ''Lady Chatterley's Lover'' is not in the public interest as a literary event and that its tendency would be to deprave and corrupt those who might read it." When Manningham-Buller saw this in ''
The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British political and cultural news magazine. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. ''The Spectator'' is politically conservative, and its principal subject a ...
'', he cabled Sir Jocelyn Simon,
Solicitor-General A solicitor general is a government official who serves as the chief representative of the government in courtroom proceedings. In systems based on the English common law that have an attorney general or equivalent position, the solicitor general ...
saying: "suggest seriously consider spectator 19th Reggie". He then sent a letter stating: "It seems to me a clear
contempt of court Contempt of court, often referred to simply as "contempt", is the crime of being disobedient to or disrespectful toward a court of law and its officers in the form of behavior that opposes or defies the authority, justice, and dignity of the co ...
and the only question is should we start proceedings? My feelings is that we should." Manningham-Buller suggested prosecuting "the proprietors of ''The Spectator'', the editor and Mr Bernard Levin" once the Chatterley trial itself was over. Sir Jocelyn convinced him to reconsider.


Lord Chancellorship

He continued as Attorney-General under Sir Anthony Eden and
Harold Macmillan Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986), was a British statesman and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Nickn ...
until July 1962, when he was rather abruptly named
Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor, formally titled Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom. The lord chancellor is the minister of justice for England and Wales and the highest-ra ...
and sent to the House of Lords to replace Lord Kilmuir. On his appointment he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Dilhorne, ''of
Towcester Towcester ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the West Northamptonshire unitary authority area of Northamptonshire, England. From 1974 to 2021, it was the administrative centre of the South Northamptonshire district. Towcester is on ...
in the County of Northampton'' on 17 July 1962. Retained, after Macmillan's retirement, in the cabinet of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when the Conservatives lost the election of 1964 he was created Viscount Dilhorne, ''of Greens Norton in the County of Northampton'' on 7 December, becoming the Deputy Leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords. In 1969 he was named a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and continued in this capacity until retiring when he turned 75, in August 1980. Manningham-Buller wrote the first report on the
Profumo affair The Profumo affair was a major scandal in British politics during the early 1960s. John Profumo, the 46-year-old Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, had an extramarital affair with the 19-year-old model ...
– an internal report for the Macmillan Government (confirmed by his daughter, The Baroness Manningham-Buller, when she appeared on the ''Desert Island Discs'' radio programme). Then when
Lord Denning Alfred Thompson Denning, Baron Denning, (23 January 1899 – 5 March 1999), was an English barrister and judge. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1923 and became a King's Counsel in 1938. Denning became a judge in 1944 when he w ...
was appointed to investigate and report on the affair, Dilhorne passed his report over to Denning. Chapman Pincher in his book ''Inside Story'' published in 1978 quotes Manningham-Buller as jokingly saying he could have sued Tom Denning for breach of copyright because significant portions of Manningham-Buller's report appeared in Denning's report virtually unchanged. Denning did include much in his report that was not in Manningham-Buller's report.


Key judgments

Lord Dilhorne held in ''Newbury District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment; Newbury District Council v International Synthetic Rubber Co. Ltd. 981AC 578'': "The conditions imposed must be for a planning purpose and not for any ulterior one... and they must fairly and reasonably relate to the development permitted. Also they must not be so unreasonable that no reasonable planning authority could have imposed them. In that case he also introduced the concept of the 'planning unit' which extinguishes previous permitted uses on land that has in practice become a new planning unit. This has stood up the test of recent jurisprudence and a DCLG (then DoE) circular is largely based on its principles.


Bullying manner

In the late 1950s,
Bernard Levin Henry Bernard Levin (19 August 1928 – 7 August 2004) was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by ''The Times'' as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship t ...
gave Manningham-Buller the nickname "Bullying-Manner" in his Parliamentary sketch. When Manningham-Buller was elevated to the peerage as Lord Dilhorne, Levin renamed him Lord Stillborn. Lord Devlin, judge in the Adams case, described Buller's technique thus:
"He could be downright rude but he did not shout or bluster. Yet his disagreeableness was so pervasive, his persistence so interminable, the obstructions he manned so far flung, his objectives apparently so insignificant, that sooner or later you would be tempted to ask yourself whether the game was worth the candle: if you asked yourself that, you were finished."
Manningham-Buller was one of the inspirations for the character of Kenneth Widmerpool in
Anthony Powell Anthony Dymoke Powell ( ; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work '' A Dance to the Music of Time'', published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English. Powell ...
's ''
A Dance to the Music of Time ''A Dance to the Music of Time'' is a 12-volume ''Book series#History, roman-fleuve'' by English writer Anthony Powell, published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim. The story is an often comic examination of movements and manners, power ...
''.


Personal life

Manningham-Buller married Lady Mary Lilian Lindsay (1910–2004), daughter of David Lindsay, 27th Earl of Crawford, in 1930. They had a son and three daughters: * John Mervyn Manningham-Buller, 2nd Viscount Dilhorne (28 February 1932 – 25 June 2022) * Hon Marion Cynthia Manningham-Buller (26 November 1934 – 10 August 2013), married Edmund Crispin Stephen James George Brudenell. * Elizabeth Lydia Manningham-Buller, Baroness Manningham-Buller (born 14 July 1948) * Hon Anne Constance Manningham-Buller (born 13 August 1951), married Sir John Christopher Parsons, KCVO. Manningham-Buller died in Knoydart, in the
Scottish Highlands The Highlands (; , ) is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Scottish Lowlands, Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Scots language, Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gae ...
, on 7 September 1980, aged 75, and was interred in Deene, Northamptonshire. He was succeeded in the viscountcy by his only son, John. His second daughter was the Director-General of MI5 from 2002 to 2007 and in 2008 was awarded a
life peerage In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. Life peers are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister. With the exception of the D ...
, becoming the
Rt Hon ''The Right Honourable'' (abbreviation: The Rt Hon. or variations) is an honorific style traditionally applied to certain persons and collective bodies in the United Kingdom, the former British Empire, and the Commonwealth of Nations. The term is ...
The Baroness Manningham-Buller, DCB. His granddaughter is model and media personality Lilah Parsons. In Parliament, Dilhorne opposed the legislation to legalise homosexual acts between consenting men.


Notes

* Cullen, Pamela V., "A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr John Bodkin Adams", London, Elliott & Thompson, 2006, * Devlin, Patrick; "Easing the Passing", London, The Bodley Head, 1985


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Manningham-Buller, Reginald Edward 1905 births Dilhorne, Reginald Edward Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount 20th-century English lawyers Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Attorneys general for England and Wales Reginald Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies English King's Counsel Hereditary barons created by Elizabeth II Knights Bachelor Dilhorne, Reginald Edward Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount Dilhorne, Reginald Edward Manningham-Buller, 1st Baron 4 Members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council Dilhorne, Reginald Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount Ministers in the Churchill caretaker government, 1945 Ministers in the Eden government, 1955–1957 Ministers in the Macmillan and Douglas-Home governments, 1957–1964 Ministers in the third Churchill government, 1951–1955 People educated at Eton College People from Amersham Solicitors general for England and Wales UK MPs 1935–1945 UK MPs 1945–1950 UK MPs 1950–1951 UK MPs 1951–1955 UK MPs 1955–1959 UK MPs 1959–1964 UK MPs who were granted peerages Viscounts created by Elizabeth II