Patrick Hastings

Hastings was born on 17 March 1880 in London to Alfred Gardiner Hastings and Kate Comyns Carr, a pre-Raphaelite painter and the sister of J. Comyns Carr. Having been born on Saint Patrick's Day Hastings was named after the saint. His father was a solicitor with "somewhat seedy clients", and the family were repeatedly bankrupted. Despite financial difficulties, there was enough money in the family to send Hastings to a private preparatory school in 1890 and to Charterhouse School in 1894. Hastings disliked school, saying "I hated the bell which drove us up in the morning, I hated the masters; above all I hated the work, which never interested me in the slightest degree". After six months in Ajaccio the family moved again, this time to the Ardennes, where they also learnt how to fish and ride horses. While they were in the Ardennes, Hastings and his brother were arrested and briefly held for murder. While attending a fête in a nearby village Archie got into a disagreement with the local priest, who accused him of insulting the French church after misunderstanding one of his comments. Desperate for a job, Hastings accepted an apprenticeship with an English engineer who claimed to have made a machine to extract gold in North Wales. After about a year and a half of work they discovered that there was no gold to be found in that part of Wales, and Hastings was informed that his services would no longer be needed. ==Military service and call to the bar==

Hastings left the failed mining operation in 1899, and travelled to London. Just after he arrived, the Second Boer War broke out, and the British government called for volunteers to join an expeditionary force. The ship reached Cape Town after three weeks, and the regiment disembarked. Their horses were considered too weak to be ridden, and so they were discharged and either put down or given to other soldiers. Hastings did not enjoy his time in the army; the weather was poor, the orders given were confusing and they were provided with minimal equipment. 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). Hastings was not a model soldier; as well as looting, he estimated that by the time he left the army he had "been charged and tried upon almost every offence known to military law". After two years of fighting, the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed in 1902, bringing an end to the Second Boer War, and his regiment was returned to London and demobilised. By the time Hastings returned, he had decided to become a barrister. There were various problems with this aim: in particular, he had no money, and the training for barristers was extremely expensive. The rules and regulations of the Inns of Court meant that a student was not allowed to work as a "tradesperson" but there was no rule against working as a journalist, and his cousin Philip Carr, a drama critic for the Daily News, got him a job writing a gossip column for the News for one pound a week. Over the next year his income decreased, as he was forced to study for the examinations rather than work for newspapers. By the end of May 1904 he had the £100 needed, and he was called to the bar on 15 June. ==Career as a barrister==

where Hastings taught himself how to practise as a barrister At the time, there was no organised way for a new barrister to find a pupil master or set of barristers' chambers, and in addition the barrister would be expected to pay the pupil master between 50 and 100 guineas (equivalent to between £ and £ in 2015). This was out of the question for Hastings; thanks to the cost of his call to the bar, he was so poor that his wig and robes had to be bought on credit. Instead he wandered around Middle Temple and by chance ran into Frederick Corbet, the only practising barrister he knew. After Hastings explained his situation, Corbet offered him a place in his set of chambers, which Hastings immediately accepted. Although he now had a place in chambers, Hastings had no way of getting a pupillage (Corbet dealt only with Privy Council cases) and he instead decided to teach himself by watching cases at the Royal Courts of Justice. 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. Finding a tenancy , who eventually offered Hastings a tenancy 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, Hastings finished the book just before the court vacation ended, and presented the draft to Gill immediately. before returning it to a pleased Gill, who let him take away another brief. Over the next two years Gill allowed him to work on nearly every case he appeared in. On 1 June 1906, Hastings married Mary Grundy, the daughter of retired Lieutenant Colonel F. L. Grundy, at All Saints' Church, Kensington. They had met through his uncle J. Comyns Carr's family, who had brought Hastings to dinner at the Grundys' house. and on the strength of this they decided to get married. To do that he would need to join a well-respected set of chambers; although Gill was giving him briefs he was still in Corbet's chambers, which saw little business. Directly below Smith's chambers were those of Horace Avory, one of the most noted barristers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. As he prepared to return home, Hastings was informed that Chartres Biron (one of the barristers who occupied Avory's chambers) had been appointed a Metropolitan Magistrate, which freed up a space in the chambers. Despite Avory's reputation as "cold and hard" he agreed to this idea, and even let Hastings keep the furniture, including Avory's valuable chair which had once belonged to Harry Poland. Although this was a good start, Hastings was not a particularly well-known barrister, and cases were few and far between. The Case of the Hooded Man took place. His first major case was "The Case of the Hooded Man". On 9 October 1912, the driver of a horse-drawn carriage noticed a crouching man near the front door of the house of Countess Flora Sztaray in Eastbourne. 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. Inspector Arthur Walls was sent to investigate, and ordered the man to come down. The man fired two shots, the first of which struck and killed Walls. A few days after the murder, a former medical student named Edgar Power contacted the police, showing them a letter that he claimed had been written by the murderer. It read "If you would save my life come here at once to 4 Tideswell Road. Ask for Seymour. Bring some cash with you. Very Urgent." Williams' case came to trial on 12 December 1912 at Lewes Assizes, with Hastings for the defence. Despite a strong argument and little direct evidence against Williams, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. The case generated large amounts of publicity, as well as an appeal hearing at which Hastings demonstrated his legal skills. The case established him as an excellent barrister, particularly when it came to cross-examination. The advertisement this case gave of his skills allowed him to move some of his practice from the county courts to the High Court of Justice, where his work slowly increased in value and size. The case made his name well-known and helped bring him work, but he still mainly worked on cases in the county courts. These did not pay particularly well, and to get around this lack of money his clerk had him take on six new pupils at once. First World War Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Hastings and his family were preparing to travel to Germany for a holiday. On the day of departure he received a note from a client, which read "You tell me you are going to Germany. Don't go, we shall be at war within forty-eight hours". Hastings heeded this warning, and remained in England – war was declared between Britain and Germany less than two days later. This made Gruban a major figure in a now-large market, and he attempted to raise £5,000 to expand his business (equivalent to approximately £ in 2015). Booth worked his way into the company with a string of false claims about his influence, and finally became chairman of the Board of Directors by claiming that it was the only way to avoid Gruban being interned due to his German origin. As soon as this happened, he cut Gruban out of the company, leaving him destitute, and eventually arranged for him to be interned. Gruban successfully appealed against the internment, and brought Booth to court. The case of Gruban v Booth opened on 7 May 1917 in the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice in front of Mr Justice Coleridge. Patrick Hastings and Hubert Wallington represented Gruban, while Booth was represented by Rigby Swift and Douglas Hogg. The trial attracted such public interest that on the final day the barristers found it physically difficult to get through the crowds surrounding the Law Courts. King's Counsel His success in Gruban v Booth allowed Hastings to switch his practice from the county courts to the High Court, and at the beginning of Hilary term 1919 he applied to become a King's Counsel (KC). Becoming a KC was a risk; he would go from competing with other junior barristers to coming up against the finest minds in the profession. Despite this he decided to take the risk, and he was accepted later that year. Select Committee of the House of Lords 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. Bersey was a senior officer of the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF), and along with several other officers he had been accused of conspiring to have the WRAF Commandant, Violet Douglas-Pennant, removed from office to cover up "rife immorality" going on at WRAF camps. Hastings took the lead in cross-examining Douglas-Pennant. She accused Bersey and others of promoting this "rife immorality" and not having the best interests of the WRAF at heart. After three weeks the committee dismissed all witnesses. The final report was produced in December 1919, and found that Douglas-Pennant had been completely unable to substantiate her claims and was deserving "of the gravest censure". As a result, Douglas-Pennant was never again employed by the government. 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. 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. Wootton sued him for libel and won, but was granted only a symbolic farthing in damages because the jury thought that Sievier had not intended to cause harm. As a result of this pyrrhic victory, Wootton held a grudge against Sievier for many years. The pamphlet was released on the day of the Grand National and distributed widely through the crowds, and in response Sievier sued Wootton for libel. Sievier appeared without a lawyer, while Wootton was represented by Sir Edward Carson, Hastings, and E. H. Spence. After the second day of the trial, Carson was called away to Ireland on political business, and Hastings was forced to act as the primary counsel for Wootton. Hastings destroyed Sievier's reputation in cross-examination, and the jury decided in Wootton's favour. In 1922, he became involved in Russell v Russell, which eventually went to the House of Lords, who set a common law rule that evidence about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of children born in marriage is inadmissible if it is given by either spouse. John Russell, later Lord Ampthill, married Christabel Hart in 1918, with both spouses agreeing that they did not want to have children. In October 1921 Christabel Russell gave birth to a son, Geoffrey Russell, and John Russell immediately filed for divorce and to have the child declared a bastard. He claimed that the child could not be his because he had not had sexual intercourse with his wife since August 1920. Hastings represented Christabel Russell in the initial trial at the High Court and lost; the decision was appealed to the Court of Appeal, where he again lost. The case was then sent to the House of Lords, who by a majority of three to two (with Lord Birkenhead giving the leading judgement) overturned the previous judgements and said that John Russell's evidence as to the legitimacy of his son was inadmissible. Hastings did not represent Christabel Russell in the House of Lords case, however, because by this point he was already Attorney General. ==Politics==

Hastings first became involved in politics after the First World War, when he joined the Liberal Party to help improve social conditions for the poorer people of the United Kingdom. He was being prepared to be the Liberal candidate for Ilford in the 1918 general election but grew disheartened by the Liberal alliance with the Conservative Party, and also by the divisions in the party; as a result, he gave up the candidacy. Hastings eventually switched sides and joined the Labour Party. His conversion, especially in the light of later events, was regarded by some as suspect: his entry in the Dictionary of Labour Biography reports speculation that Hastings foresaw that Labour may come to Government and had few senior lawyers to fill the Law Officer posts. John Paton, after speaking from the same Independent Labour Party (ILP) platform as Hastings, came to the conclusion that Hastings gave political speeches using his skill as a lawyer to master a brief; on the train home, Hastings appeared not to have heard of the ILP. After an interview with Sidney and Beatrice Webb he became the Labour candidate for Wallsend in December 1920. Beatrice Webb was later to write in her diaries that Hastings was "without any sincerely held public purpose" and "an unpleasant type of clever pleader and political arriviste, who jumped into the Labour Party just before the 1922 election, when it had become clear that the Labour Party was the alternative government and it had not a single lawyer of position attached to it". However Hastings was returned for Wallsend with a majority of 2,823 in the 1922 general election. After returning to London from Wallsend, he attended a full meeting of Labour MPs to decide who would become the Party Chairman. This effectively meant choosing the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, because Labour was the largest opposition party in the House of Commons. He made his debut speech on 22 February 1923 against the Rent Restrictions Bill, an amendment to the Rent Act 1921. He attacked it as "a monstrous piece of legislation", As a result of this and the slow workings of Parliament, Hastings quickly became frustrated by politics. The IRA had supporters in the United Kingdom, working openly as the Irish Self-Determination League (ISDL), and the Free State government shared the names of these supporters with the British authorities, who kept a close eye on them. On 11 March 1923 the police in Britain arrested IRA sympathisers living in Britain including Art O'Brien, the head of the ISDL. Sources disagree on numbers, giving either approximately eighty or approximately 100. at least six had never even been to Ireland before. On 23 March 1923 he appeared in ''R v Secretary of State for Home Affairs ex parte O'Brien [1923] 2 KB 361 at a divisional court consisting of Mr Justice Avory and Mr Justice Salter to apply for a writ of habeas corpus'' for O'Brien as a test case to allow the release of the others. The initial hearing was ineffective because Hastings was unable to provide an affidavit from O'Brien, which was required for a writ of habeas corpus to be considered, but by the time the hearing was resumed on 10 April he had managed to obtain one. The court eventually declared that they could not issue a writ, because the Habeas Corpus Act 1862 prevented them from issuing a writ to any colony possessing a court which could also issue a writ. Since Ireland possessed such a court, an English divisional court could not act. Three days later, Hastings took the case to the Court of Appeal, who declared that the internment orders were invalid since the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920 was no longer applicable. Attorney-General When the new Parliament opened in 1923, the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin suggested that tariff reform was the best way to solve Britain's economic difficulties. Unfortunately Bonar Law, his predecessor, had promised that there would be no tariff reforms introduced during the current Parliament. Baldwin felt that the only solution was to call a new general election. In the ensuing election Baldwin's Conservatives lost 88 seats, with the Labour Party gaining 47 and the Liberal Party gaining 41. This produced a hung parliament, and Labour and the Liberals formed a coalition government with Labour as the main party. Hastings hesitated before accepting the appointment, despite the knighthood and appointment as head of the bar that came with the post, and later said that "if I had known what the next year was to bring forward I should almost certainly have [declined]". His working hours were regularly between 7am and 5am the following morning, and the policemen on duty at the House of Commons complained to him that he was working too long, since they were required to stay on duty as long as he was. Hastings approved the prosecution of the newspaper's editor, J. R. Campbell, for violating the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797. Hastings himself read out a reply, which said that the Director of Public Prosecutions had complained that the article was inciting troops to mutiny. Another Labour backbencher, Jimmy Maxton, rose and asked the Prime Minister "if he has read the article, and if he is aware that the article contains mainly a call to the troops not to allow themselves to be used in industrial disputes, and that that point of view is shared by a large number of Members sitting on these benches?" This statement lead to uproar, and the Speaker was forced to intervene and halt further discussions. Maxton knew Campbell, and revealed that he was only the temporary editor and had not written the article – the article had actually been copied from another newspaper. Along with Guy Stevenson, the assistant director of Public Prosecutions, Hastings then visited Ramsay MacDonald to explain the facts of the case. MacDonald was "furious", and the opinion of the Liberal and Conservative parties was that the government was attempting to pervert the course of justice. MacDonald replied that "I was not consulted regarding either the institution or the subsequent withdrawal of these proceedings". Hastings refused the general suggestion, but planned to make a speech at the upcoming debate explaining his actions. This was followed by a motion of censure pushed forward by Robert Horne, and after Horne had presented the motion Hastings rose to speak, and explained the facts of the case. His speech took over an hour, and was frequently interrupted by Conservative MPs. This was rejected by MacDonald, and MPs continued to speak for several more hours. His plight was depicted on the cover of Time, along with a quotation ("What have I done wrong?") from his speech. Remaining time in politics Hastings was again returned for Wallsend at the ensuing election, despite the crisis caused by the Zinoviev letter, although with a reduced majority. Although Hastings remained on the Labour frontbench he rarely spoke in the House of Commons, and attended less and less frequently. After suffering from kidney problems during 1925, he left Parliament by accepting the nominal position of Steward of the Manor of Northstead — a legal fiction office with the same effect as, but less well known than, the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds) on 29 June 1926; this enabled Margaret Bondfield, who had lost her seat in the previous election, to return to Parliament in his place at the ensuing by-election. He never returned to politics. ==Return to the bar==

After leaving politics, Hastings returned to his work as a barrister, and eventually surpassed even his previous reputation and success as an advocate. The Daily Express had published two articles saying that he was a liar, and had planned out a bogus robbery to advertise a device known as the Monomark. The case opened on 9 February 1928 in front of Lord Hewart, with Hastings and Norman Birkett representing Mitchell-Hedges and William Jowitt and J.B. Melville representing London Express Newspapers. After his release, Money immediately spoke to his official contacts, and the next morning the matter was raised in the House of Commons. 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. 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. 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. Savidge said that Collins' manner had become more and more familiar during the interview, and that at several points he and Sergeant Clarke had implied that they wanted her to have sexual intercourse with them. Savidge spent almost six hours in the witness box, and her testimony left Collins looking guilty in the eyes of the tribunal. Collins, Clarke and Wyles were all interviewed, along with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and Archibald Bodkin himself. The final report of the tribunal was released on 13 June 1928 and consisted of both a majority report and a minority one, since not all of the tribunal members agreed on the validity of Savidge's evidence. The majority report said that Savidge was not intimidated into answering questions, nor treated inappropriately, and that "we are unable therefore to accept Miss Savidge's statement. We are satisfied that the interrogation followed the lines indicated to [Collins] by the Director of Public Prosecutions and was not unduly extended". The minority report blamed the police, particularly Collins, for the method in which Savidge was interviewed. United Diamond Fields v Joel Hastings was next involved in United Diamond Fields of British Guiana Ltd v Joel and Others, which he considered both his most difficult and most interesting case. Following the discovery of the diamond mines in South Africa, men such as Solly Joel had established a diamond syndicate to restrict the amount of diamonds on the market. For this to work, they had to control the entire output of diamonds in the world, which they planned to do by acquiring interests in all of the diamond mines. A few months later, United Diamond Fields of British Guiana was incorporated as a limited company. The company used Oppenheimer as a technical adviser, and immediately arranged to have its diamonds sold to the syndicate. The price was to be fixed for six months, with an auditor's certificate at the end of that time used to negotiate a new price. This strained their finances and the new diamonds forced the price down. To correct this, the syndicate were forced to reduce the flow of diamonds from British Guiana, which they did by getting Oppenheimer to reduce the price of Guianan diamonds to the point where the company output dropped from a month to less than per month. Oppenheimer then claimed that the profits were only five per cent, forcing the company to reduce the price yet again. As a result of this the company was forced into liquidation in September 1927. Hastings worried that the case would become unmanageable, with the syndicate relying on over 4,000 documents for their defence, but luckily found a certificate showing that the company profits, rather than the five per cent Oppenheimer had reported, were in fact seventeen per cent. The first witness called was Coen himself, who Hastings later described as "the best witness without exception that I have ever seen in the witness-box". He was interviewed over seven days by Hastings, then Bevan and then Birkett. Eight days into the trial the matter of the certificate came up, and Oppenheimer was unable to provide an explanation. As a result, the jury found against the syndicate; they were ordered to pay back all of the company's costs, and all of its losses. Both defendants pleaded not guilty. The main defence on the use of secret reserve accounting came with the help of Lord Plender. 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. Hastings said that "if my client ... was guilty of a criminal offence, there is not a single accountant in the City of London or in the world who is not in the same position." Both Kylsant and Morland were acquitted of falsifying records, but Kylsant was found guilty of "making, circulating or publishing a written statement which he knew to be false", namely the 1928 prospectus, and was sentenced to 12 months in prison. Elvira Barney Well known to dislike appearing in capital cases and having a heavy workload, Hastings hesitated in 1932 when approached by Sir John Mullens, a trustee of the Stock Exchange, to defend his daughter Elvira Mullens Barney on a charge of murder. 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. Hastings was persuaded to take the case by his wife who remembered that their children had shared a governess who had also cared for "dear little Elvira". He appeared at the Magistrates' Court, where he cross-examined the forensic scientist Sir Bernard Spilsbury 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". 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. When Hastings rose to cross-examine, he took up the gun, pointed it to the ceiling and repeatedly pulled the trigger over and over again. One crown witness had said that on another occasion she saw Elvira Barney firing the gun while holding it in her left hand; when he called his client Hastings had the gun placed in front of her. After a pause he shouted at her to pick up the gun and she spontaneously picked it up in her right hand. 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. Oswald Mosley Hastings appeared for Sir Oswald Mosley in several cases during the 1930s, having become friends with him while in Parliament. The first was a libel case against The Star, who had written a comment on one of Mosley's speeches implying that he advocated an armed revolution to overthrow the British government. 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. Birkett argued that The Star article was nothing more than a summary of Mosley's speech, and that any comments implying the overthrow of the British government were found in the speech itself. 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". The jury eventually decided that The Star had libelled Mosley, and awarded him £5,000 in damages (approximately £ in 2015). According to Mosley, Hastings told him that Flowers, a former cricketer, had a poor reputation at the bar, and that Mosley should not show him up too much. The prosecution claimed that after a BUF meeting, Mosley and the other defendants had marched around Worthing, threatening and assaulting civilians. Hastings argued that the defendants had been deliberately provoked by a crowd of civilians, and several witnesses testified that the crowd had been throwing tomatoes and threatening Mosley. The judge eventually directed the jury to return a verdict of "not guilty". ==Work as a playwright==

As well as his work as a barrister, Hastings also tried his hand at writing plays. His first play was The Moscow Doctor, based on a novel by Seton Merriman which he had rewritten; it ran for over a week in Brighton. He desired to have an original work performed, however, and to this end wrote The River over a period of 20 years before taking it to St James's Theatre, where it was accepted and performed in June 1925. Reviews compared the plot to something out of the ''Boy's Own Paper. Emboldened by this success Hastings wrote The Moving Finger'', which despite moderately good reviews was not popular, and was withdrawn as a result. Subsequent West End plays were Escort (1942) and The Blind Goddess (1947), the latter adapted into a film of the same title by Gainsborough Pictures the following year. ==Retirement and death==

Hastings retired from most of his work as a barrister in 1938, but soon found a way to occupy himself after the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Although, at fifty-nine, far past the age at which he could join the armed forces, Hastings wrote to the Secretary of State for War offering his services, and was eventually contacted by Kingsley Wood, the Secretary of State for Air, who offered him a commission in the Royal Air Force as a squadron leader in Administrative and Special Duties Branch, serving with Fighter Command. He then started work at RAF Stanmore Park, but found his work "very depressing" – most of the other officers were over thirty years younger than he, and he suffered from continuous bad health. His one major contribution was to create a scheme allowing the purchase of small models of German aircraft, allowing the British forces on the ground an easy way to identify incoming planes and avoiding friendly fire situations. In Spring 1940 he was elected Treasurer of the Middle Temple. He participated in only a few cases following his war service. 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". Cross-examining Laski, the following exchange occurred: HASTINGS: Are there any privileged in the Socialist Party? LASKI: Why, indeed, Sir Patrick, when you were a member— THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE: No, Mr. Laski. HASTINGS: Do not be rude. Laski's counsel later said that he hoped that Hastings would at least have said "Touché". Laski lost the case, unable to counter the questioning from Hastings which referred to his previous written works. However the stress of the case told on Hastings. In 1948, Hastings published The Autobiography of Sir Patrick Hastings, and the following year published Cases in Court, a book giving his views on 21 of his most noted cases. The same year he published Famous and Infamous Cases, a book on noted trials through history, such as those at Nuremberg. In early 1948, he suffered a small stroke which forced him to retire permanently. On 11 November 1949, he and his wife travelled to Kenya, where their son Nicky had moved to start a new life after the end of the Second World War. While there, he suffered a second stroke due to the air pressure, and he never fully recovered. Hastings spent the next two years living in a flat in London, before dying on 26 February 1952 of cerebral thrombosis. ==Personal life==

Hastings married Mary Grundy on 1 June 1906. One daughter, Barbara, married Nicolas Bentley, a cartoonist. ==Ancestry==