Richard Rampton was
called to the Bar in November 1965 (
Inner Temple) and was appointed a QC (
Queen's Counsel) in 1987. In
Irving v. Penguin Books and Lipstadt, he represented Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher against false accusations of
libel after she said that Irving was a
Holocaust denier in her book
Denying the Holocaust (1993). The trial was dramatised in the film
Denial in which Rampton was played by
Tom Wilkinson. Rampton also represented
McDonald's in the
McLibel case, where the company sued two members of the
London Greenpeace environmental campaigning group. Rampton's earlier cases include
Andrew Neil (editor of
The Sunday Times) vs
Peregrine Worsthorne,
Lord Aldington vs
Count Nikolai Tolstoy and
Gillian Taylforth vs
News of the World. He also successfully represented politician
George Galloway against
The Daily Telegraph over allegations that he took £375,000 from
Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. He represented
Associated Newspapers Group plc in Lucas-Box v News Group Newspapers Ltd; Lucas-Box v Associated Newspapers Group plc and others. This case produced the "Lucas-Box meaning" whereby under modern libel practice a defendant must set out in his/her statement of case the defamatory meaning that he/she seeks to prove to be essentially or
substantially true. ==Personal life==