Oliver Popplewell

Popplewell's father was a civil servant. He was the godfather of Sir Stephen Fry, and the grandfather of Anna Popplewell and Lulu Popplewell. Popplewell died on 6 June 2024, at the age of 96. ==Education==

Popplewell went to Charterhouse School as a scholar, where he played cricket with Peter May and future politician Jim Prior, and after spending two years of National Service in the Royal Navy, In 2003, Popplewell became one of the oldest mature students at the University of Oxford when he started reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Harris Manchester College. ==Cricket==

Popplewell was a right-handed wicket-keeper-batsman, playing 56 innings in 41 matches, scoring 881 runs for an average of 20.46 including two half-centuries. His sole bowling stint was three balls for the MCC against Cambridge University in 1953. He was president of the MCC from 1994 to 1996. ==Legal career==

Popplewell was called to the bar in 1951. He was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1969. After serving as Recorder of Burton upon Trent and Deputy Chairman of Oxfordshire Quarter Sessions, he was appointed as Recorder of the Crown Court in 1971. During this time, he chaired the Bradford Inquiry into Crowd Control and Safety at Sports Grounds in 1985. He was a judge of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, vice-chairman of the Parole Board, and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. A copy of the ''Committee of Inquiry into Crowd Safety and Control at Sports Grounds' Interim Report'' is published online in PDF format by the Bradford City Fire website. He presided over the libel case brought by Jonathan Aitken against The Guardian and Granada Television, He ruled in 2018 that the foreign act of state doctrine (a rule concerned with the courts' approach to another state's legislative and executive actions) applies not just in litigation in the English courts, but also during arbitration. While presiding over the High Court case brought by the athlete Linford Christie against former criminal John McVicar, the editor of Spike Magazine, he was widely reported as asking, "What is Linford's lunchbox?". He later claimed that this was intended as a joke. ==Hillsborough controversy and the Bradford City stadium fire developments==

On 19 October 2011, Popplewell sparked fury by calling on the Liverpool families involved in the Hillsborough disaster to behave more like the relatives of victims of the Bradford City stadium disaster. He made the comments in a letter to The Times following the Commons debate on 17 October 2011 calling for all Cabinet papers on Hillsborough to be released. He said: "The citizens of Bradford behaved with quiet dignity and great courage. They did not harbour conspiracy theories. They did not seek endless further inquiries". His letter was published by The Times's sister paper, The Sun, which is boycotted on Merseyside, the day after it was revealed to Parliament that senior policemen had changed the evidence of junior policemen whose evidence contradicted the official version given to the press by police spokesmen. Popplewell was widely criticised for his comments, including a rebuke from a survivor of the Bradford stadium disaster. In April 2015, Popplewell expressed the view that it was "bizarre" to suggest that the Bradford City stadium fire was anything other than accidental. This was in response to the publication of an article in The Guardian newspaper of an extract from a newly published book Fifty-Six: The Story of the Bradford Fire by Martin Fletcher. The extract of the Fletcher book contained previously unpublicised information about eight earlier fires allegedly connected to the Bradford City owner and chairman, Stafford Heginbotham (who died in 1995). Popplewell later qualified his remark and suggested that the police should look into the "remarkable number" of fires allegedly connected to Bradford City's then chairman "to see if there was anything sinister". He had earlier said that he remained convinced that the fire was "undoubtedly" started by accident by a discarded match or cigarette, despite the new evidence. ==Works==

• • Football in Its Place: An Environmental Psychology of Football Grounds by David Canter, Miriam Comber and David L. Uzzell with an introduction by Sir Oliver Popplewell, Publisher: Taylor & Francis (1989); • . (. [Archived PDF copy sourced – via Hatful of History website by historian Evan Smith]) • ==References==