Walter Raleigh was born in the 1550s to a Protestant family and after studying at Oxford and Lyons Inn (one of the Inns of Chancery) was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1574/5, though he was never Called to the Bar. He travelled to North America with his half-brother in 1578, drawing the censure of the Privy Council for activity against Spanish shipping. Raleigh fought in Ireland in service of the Queen, later being rewarded with lands seized from Irish rebels, and swiftly became one of her favourites. In 1584, the Queen granted Raleigh a charter authorising him to explore, colonise and rule any "remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian Prince or inhabited by Christian People," in return for one-fifth of all the gold and silver that might be mined there, and in 1585 he sponsored the foundation of the ill-fated Roanoake colony, paving the way for future English colonisation of the New World. He is credited for the popularisation of the use of tobacco and bringing it to England for the first time in 1586. Falling out of favour with the Queen in 1592, he continued to serve in the military and explore the world, but following the succession of James I was implicated in the Main Plot and imprisoned in the Tower of London until 1616. He was released in 1617 to conduct an expedition to find El Dorado, but following an attack by his men on Spanish territory, the death sentence was at last carried out and he was executed on 29 October 1618.

Born in Kent in 1568, Henry Wotton was educated at Winchester and Oxford, before leaving the country to travel Europe for a number of years. Shortly after his return to England, he was admitted to the Middle Temple, and around the same time became an agent of the Earl of Essex. Following Essex’s downfall, Wotton escaped to the continent, briefly travelling back to Scotland to warn James VI (later James I of England) of a plot against his life. This act paid off when, on James' accession to the English throne, Wotton was knighted and sent as his ambassador to Venice, where he spent the majority of the following twenty years. On returning to England he was made Provost of Eton College, a position which he held until his death in 1639.

Inigo Jones was born in 1573 to a Welsh clothworker and studied in Italy before working for the King of Denmark. He became a prominent stage designer, working closely with Ben Jonson, and was particularly influenced by the ideas of Palladio and Vitruvius. He was admitted to the Inn in February 1613, having designed the scenery and decorations for a masque held jointly by the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Frederick V, Count Palatine of the Rhine. Following a formative tour of Italy starting in 1613, he was appointed Surveyor-General of the King's Works, and in the course of his glittering career was responsible for designing the Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall, the Queen's Chapel at St James's Palace, Covent Garden Square and Lincoln's Inn Fields. His career did not survive the outbreak of the Civil War, and he died in 1652.

John Pym was born in Somerset in 1584 and was admitted to the Inn in 1602 after legal education at Oxford, though he does not appear to have been Called. He became a Member of Parliament in 1614, and in 1626 was instrumental in drawing up the articles of impeachment against the Duke of Buckingham. Pym conducted the proceedings against the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud in 1640 and 1641, two events which contributed to the King's abortive attempt to arrest him and four other members of Parliament in 1642, an event which triggered the outbreak of the English Civil War. He was appointed Lieutenant of the Ordnance early in the war but died not long after in December 1643.

Edward Hyde was born in 1609, the nephew of Sir Lawrence Hyde, Attorney General and also a Middle Templar. After studying at Oxford, he was admitted to the Inn in 1626, though he was not Called to the Bar until 1633, having preferred to immerse himself in a community of scholarly and literary friends including Ben Jonson and John Selden. After several successful years at the Bar, Hyde was elected an MP in 1640, growing gradually closer to the King and joining the Royalist side on the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642. Going into exile with the Prince of Wales, he soon found himself a close advisor to the future King and was made Lord Chancellor in 1658. Following the Restoration, Hyde continued to play a prominent political role, and saw his daughter married to the King's brother, the future James II, but by the mid-1660s his star had waned. He was impeached by the Commons and forced into exile in 1667 and died in France in 1674, having completed his magisterial History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. Both of his granddaughters, Mary and Anne, would go on to be queens of England.

John Evelyn was born in 1620, and after an education at Oxford took up residence in the Temple. He was elected in 1642 one of the Comptrollers of the Temple-Revellers, but was overtaken by events and, on the outbreak of the Civil War, was excused this duty to go into the country, being a staunch Royalist. After spending ten years travelling and studying on the continent, he returned to England and lived quietly until the Restoration of the Monarchy, after which he held various offices at court. A polymath, Evelyn was one of the founders of the Royal Society and wrote books on a vast range of topics including horticulture, theology and air pollution. His diaries are an important source for the history of his times, running from his student days at the Inn to the time of his death in 1706. He memorably describes the Inn's Revels as 'an old, but riotous custom' with 'relation to neither Virtue nor policy', and Sir Henry Peckham's Reader's Feast as 'a pompous entertainment'.

The youngest son of Dudley, fourth Lord North, and younger brother to Francis, later Lord Guildford, Roger was born in Suffolk in 1653. Called to the Bar by the Inn in 1674, he was appointed Lent Reader in 1682 and Treasurer in 1683 at the age of just thirty. Solicitor-General to the Duke of York (later James II) from 1684, and MP for Dunwich from 1685, his star waned after the Glorious Revolution and he retired to his estate at Rougham in Suffolk. He is better known today as a prolific collector of books and for his many writings, including A Discourse of Fish and Fish Ponds, Memoirs of Musick, A Discourse on the Study of the Laws, and the biographical Lives of the Norths, which remain a valuable resource today for the history of his period, including a vivid account of the Middle Temple Fire of 1679.

Roger North after Sir Peter Lely. Oil on canvas, based on a work of 1680. NPG 766 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Born in Yorkshire in 1670, Congreve spent most of his childhood in Ireland. After being educated at Kilkenny College and Trinity College Dublin, he moved to London and was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1690/1 with the intention of studying the law. He soon drifted away from the law into the literary world, attending gatherings in coffee houses and associating with John Dryden. Congreve enjoyed a period of considerable success as a playwright in the last years of the eighteenth century before changing public tastes and morality saw his popularity wane. He continued to write poetry and translate the classical authors and became involved for a time in Whig politics.

William Congreve by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt. Oil on canvas, 1709. NPG 3199 © National Portrait Gallery, London. This image has been cropped and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode

The longest serving Speaker of the House of Commons, Onslow served for 33 years, a tenure described as ‘distinguished by talents of the highest order, the most refined dignity, and a zealous watchfulness of the liberties and privileges of Parliament’. Born in 1691 and Called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1713, he was elected MP for Guildford in 1720 and then for Surrey in 1727. Elected Speaker in 1728, he was notable for his active and energetic defence of the rights of MPs and staunch observation of procedure. In 1753 persuaded Parliament to fund the acquisition of the Sloane collection and Harleian Library, collections which formed the nucleus of the British Museum. He served until his retirement in 1761.

William Blackstone was born in Cheapside in 1723 and was admitted to Charterhouse on the nomination of Sir Robert Walpole. At Oxford he studied Greek and Latin literature and architecture, but on admission to the Middle Temple in 1741 he devoted himself solely to the study of the law, being Called to the Bar in 1746. After involving himself in University administration back at Oxford, Blackstone began a course of lectures in 1753, which became immensely popular. He started publishing legal texts in 1756 and after seven years as Oxford's Vinerian Professor of English Law, published his masterly The Commentaries on the Laws of England in 1765, a work which made the common law readable and accessible for the first time and was required reading for students for decades to come. He was an opponent of slavery, stating that he believed it to be ‘repugnant to reason, and the principles of natural law’. He became a Serjeant-at-Law and Justice of the Common Pleas in 1770 and died in 1780.

Born in Maryland in 1732 to a family of tobacco planters, John Dickinson studied law in Pennsylvania before travelling to London in 1753, where he was admitted to the Middle Temple, and returned in 1757 to practice at the Pennsylvania Bar. He was a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses in the 1770s, but was opposed to declaring independence in 1776, refusing to sign the Declaration once it was made. Dickinson was notable for freeing his slaves in 1777 and drafting the articles of Confederation. He served as President of Delaware and then of Pennsylvania and was instrumental in the drafting of the United States Constitution in the 1780s and 1790s.

© The New York Public Library

William Scott was born in Durham in 1745. His father was an ironmonger and his mother had fled Newcastle on the approach of Scottish rebels. After an education at Newcastle Grammar School and Oxford, he was Called to the Bar at the Inn in 1780. Rising quickly through the profession, he was appointed King's Advocate-General in 1787 and Judge of the Consistory Court in London in 1788. In 1798, Scott became Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, where he made his name and heard two particularly notable cases relating to the abolition of the slave trade. He also served as member of Parliament for the University of Oxford from 1801 to 1821 and was raised to the peerage in 1821. He retired from the Admiralty Court in 1828. Scott was Reader at the Inn in 1799, and its Treasurer in 1807. He was an abolitionist but upheld the letter of international law in regarding actions taken to supress the slave trade and advocated for remedies through international treaties. He was the elder brother of John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon.

Edward Rutledge was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He was admitted to the Inn in 1767 and was Called in 1772. Returning to Charleston, he became a successful lawyer in practice with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and represented the colony at the Continental Congress. Rutledge was the youngest delegate to sign the Declaration of Independence and saw action before being captured in 1780. After the war, he served in state politics and was became his home state's governor in 1798. He died in 1800.

John Scott was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1751. His father was an ironmonger and his mother had fled Newcastle on the approach of Scottish rebels. He was educated at Newcastle Grammar School and at University College, Oxford, where his elder brother William was a Fellow. Despite early academic promise he was obliged to give up his own fellowship (and his hopes of taking holy orders) on his elopement with Bessie Surtees and was forced to turn to the law. He was admitted to the Inn in 1773, Called in 1776, and rose to prominence in the 1780s, in part thanks to the support of his elder brother William. Scott was elected as Bencher of the Inn in 1783, serving as Reader in 1792 and Treasurer in 1797. He entered Parliament in the same year he was Benched, and soon rose to prominence under Pitt, becoming his Solicitor-General in 1788 and Attorney-General five years later. As Attorney-General he prosecuted Hardy, Horne Tooke and Thelwall for high treason, and was involved with the suppression of seditious writings and other political offences in that time of continental turmoil. He was made Lord Chancellor in 1801 and, excepting a brief intermission, held the position until 1827. He opposed the abolition of the slave trade in the House of Lords, as well as the emancipation of debtors and Catholics.

Banastre Tarleton, born in 1754 to a successful merchant, was admitted to the Inn in 1770, though he was never Called. Having burned through a large inheritance from his father, he became a cavalry officer at the age of twenty-one and sailed to North America with Lord Cornwallis to fight in the American Revolutionary War. He fought in a number of prominent engagements, including the Battle of Brandywine, and gained a reputation for ruthlessness and brutality, in part due to the alleged massacre of surrendering Continental soldiers at the Battle of Waxhaws. In later life, he served as an MP, becoming a significant Whig and supporter of the slave trade.

Sir Banastre Tarleton, Bt by Samuel William Reynolds, after Sir Joshua Reynolds. Mezzotint, published 1820 or after (1782). NPG D4350 © National Portrait Gallery, London. This image has been cropped and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence.

Known as Wolfe Tone, he was born in Dublin in 1763, and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1787, the same year he was admitted to the Inn – at the time it was a requirement to keep terms at an English Inn of Court before being able to practice at the Irish Bar. He shared chambers in Hare Court with his brother while a student, though confessed that after two years studying the Law 'I knew exactly as much about it as I knew of necromancy'. In 1789, Tone returned to Dublin and was Called to the Irish Bar. Following the outbreak of the French Revolution he became prominent in politics, forming the 'Club of the United Irishmen', a society aimed at a complete reform of the legislature of Ireland. Having failed to achieve this by constitutional means, he travelled to Paris in 1796, and negotiated the invasion of Ireland by Generals Lazare Hoche and Jean Joseph Humbert. Tone was taken prisoner during the failed invasion and condemned to death. He took his own life in prison in 1798.

Theobald Wolfe Tone by T.W. Huffam, after Unknown artist. Mezzotint, mid 19th century. NPG D13755 © National Portrait Gallery, London. This image has been cropped and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode

Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, whose portrait hangs today in the Bench Apartments, was born in 1795, and joined the Middle Temple in 1813. He was Called to the Bar in 1821, and proceeded to a successful career as a judge and a Radical MP, as well as achieving note as a poet and playwright. A staunch abolitionist, Talfourd’s works Ion and The Athenian Captive used Ancient Greek settings to attack tyranny, autocracy and slavery.

He is known particularly as a supporter and friend of Charles Dickens – being one of the young author’s guarantors upon his own admission to the Inn in 1839. They were close for many years: Dickens dedicated The Pickwick Papers to his friend, and the two frequently socialised and holidayed together. Talfourd was also the proposer in Parliament of the Copyright Act, which was a cause close to Dickens’ heart. Dickens reportedly modelled David Copperfield’s Tommy Traddles upon Talfourd, and his children Kate and Frank (the latter also a Middle Templar) are said to have inspired the two characters so named in Nicholas Nickleby.

Richard Windeyer was born in London in 1806, the son of a Parliamentary Reporter, and remained in London to follow in his father's footsteps when the rest of the family emigrated to Sydney. He was admitted to the Inn in 1829 and Called in 1834, shortly after which he followed his family to Sydney, making his name as a barrister in the years afterwards. Elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1843, he became a prominent politician. Windeyer fought for the cause of the Aboriginal population and died as a result of anxiety and overwork in 1847.

Richard Windeyer 1830s by an unknown artist Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Australia. https://www.portrait.gov.au/portraits/2009%252E158/

Charles John Huffam Dickens is one of the world's best-known novelists, immensely popular in his lifetime and in the one and a half centuries since his death. Born in Portsmouth in 1812, he grew up in Kent and London. After a dalliance with the stage in his early twenties, Dickens took to writing and journalism. By the end of the 1830s he had published Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby, and produced numerous great works over the following decades, many of them characterised by fierce social commentary and criticism of the poverty widespread in Victorian society. Dickens was admitted to the Inn in 1839 with the intention of reading for the Bar. His time at the Inn gave rise to descriptions of the dingy alleyways and dilapidated buildings in his works, and the bright, sparkling fountain that features at a key juncture in Martin Chuzzlewit. Despite his familiarity with the Inns of Court, and records indicating his having dined in Hall, he was never Called to the Bar, and eventually petitioned to withdraw from membership of the Inn in 1855.

John Bigham was born in Liverpool, the son of a merchant, and was educated at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and the University of London. Called to the Bar in 1870, he was made a QC in 1883 and built up a prosperous commercial practise. He was elected to Parliament in 1895 as a Liberal Unionist MP for a Liverpool constituency, although remained focussed on his legal career. Knighted and made a judge of the Queen’s Bench in 1897, he went on to become President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty division in 1909 and was raised to the peerage in 1910. He is best known for leading the inquiry into the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912 and the RMS Lusitania in 1915. Despite deafness, he continued working into his old age, and returned to the bench in his eighties to assist divorce courts with a heavy backlog.

John Charles Bigham, 1st Viscount Mersey ('Judges. No. 51.') by Sir Leslie Ward. Chromolithograph, published in Vanity Fair 3 February 1898. NPG D44893 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee was born in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, in 1844. After his Call to the Bar in 1867, he quickly became the most sought after barrister in the Calcutta High Court. He was the first Indian to act as a Standing Counsel, in which capacity he officiated four times - 1882, 1884, 1886-87. Bonnerjee presided over the first session of the Indian National Congress held in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1885. He was President for a second time in 1892. Bonnerjee also assisted in raising funds in India for a London Agency that had been established to propagate India's case in Britain in 1888. He also advocated for the establishment of a Royal Commission for the reduction of military expenditure and its just apportionment between Britain and India. Bonnerjee split his time between living in Britain and living in India and stood for election to the seat of Barrow and Furness in the British Parliament in 1892, but he did not succeed in his attempt. In 1902 he moved to Britain due to ill health and started practising before the Privy Council. He died in Croydon in 1906.

Born in 1857, Rokuichiro Masujima studied law at the University of Tokyo. He was admitted to the Inn in 1881 at the age of twenty-three and and was Called to the Bar in 1883. Masujima returned to Japan to practice the law, and in 1885 founded the 'English Law School' in Tokyo, which went on to become Chuo University ('Chuo' meaning 'Middle' in Japanese), still a leading law school today. He also established the Sei-diu-Do Common Law Institute in Tokyo in 1934 in order to provide a library of the Common Law for Japanese students and promote knowledge of Anglo-American law in that country.

Rufus Isaacs was born in 1860 to a Spitalfields fruit merchant, and after spells as a ship's boy and a jobber on the stock-exchange, was admitted to the Inn in 1885. After being Called in 1887, he went on to a career as a successful and well-known barrister, becoming a QC in 1898. Isaacs entered the Commons as a Liberal MP in 1904 and served as Attorney-General and Solicitor-General, becoming Lord Chief Justice in 1913. He served as Autumn Reader at the Inn in 1917, and in 1918 he was sent to Washington as the British Ambassador. In 1921 he was appointed Viceroy of India, a position in which he served until 1926. Isaacs was Treasurer of the Inn in 1927 and died in 1935.

John Sankey was educated at Lancing College and Jesus College, Oxford, before being Called to the Bar in 1892. Appointed a KC in 1909 and a High Court judge in 1914, he went on to serve as Lord Chancellor between 1929 and 1935. He is remembered today for his landmark judgement setting out the ‘living tree’ doctrine which became the foundation of Canadian constitutional law, and for his chairmanship of the Sankey Committee, which produced the Sankey Declaration of the Rights of Man identifying eleven fundamental human rights. The Sankey Declaration was a notable influence on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Jan Christiaan Smuts, future Prime Minister of South Africa, was born in 1870 in Cape Colony. Travelling to the United Kingdom after schooling, he matriculated at Cambridge, where he read Law. He graduated with a double First and was admitted to the Middle Temple to read for the Bar in 1892. It was not long, however, before he returned to Cape Colony, where he moved between law and the military over the next few years, finally becoming a cabinet minister in the newly constituted Union of South Africa in 1909. In 1917, Smuts was elected an Honorary Bencher of the Inn and had a distinguished record of service during World War One. After the war he returned to South Africa where he was elected Prime Minister in 1919, serving until 1924 but taking the office once again in a wartime coalition government in 1939. While initially a supporter of racial segregation, Smuts began to oppose it over time, a position which contributed to his political downfall in 1948. He died in 1950.

Jan Christian Smuts by Bassano Ltd. Bromide print, 1947. NPG x84808 © National Portrait Gallery, London. This image has been cropped and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode

John Buchan, born in Perth, Scotland in 1875, was a politician, novelist and historian, perhaps best-known today as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps. He was admitted to the Inn in 1897, and lived in Brick Court and Temple Gardens, becoming the pupil of John Hamilton and Sydney Rowlatt. He initially failed his Bar exams but passed in the summer of 1901 and was Called to the Bar in June. After work involving the reconstruction of South Africa after the Boer War, he returned to the Inn in 1903 and made a name as a specialist in tax cases, publishing a significant textbook on the subject. He became editor of The Spectator in 1906, and began publishing adventure novels, including Prester John and The Thirty-Nine Steps. He also turned his literary talents to writing propaganda during World War One and became Director of Information in 1917. He established himself as an active Member of Parliament, and in 1935 was made Governor General of Canada, a position he held until his death in 1940.

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir by Bassano Ltd. Whole-plate film negative, 3 April 1935. NPG x81241 © National Portrait Gallery, London. This image has been cropped and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode

Pixley ka Isaka Seme, born in the Inanda Mission, Colony of Natal (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa), began practising as a lawyer in Johannesberg in 1910 and established the South African Native Farmers Association in 1911 in order to encourage black farmers to buy land and gain independence. In response, the white government barred black people from owning land in South Africa. After the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, Seme and other young African leaders established the South African Native National Congress, later the African National Congress (ANC), in order to unify various African groups from separate colonies. Seme became President of the ANC from 1930 to 1936, coinciding unfortunately with a period of decline for the organisation. In 1937, he left politics and returned to practising law.

Geoffrey Fisher was born in 1887 and educated at Marlborough and Oxford. He became a priest in 1913 and Headmaster of Repton School in 1914. He was appointed Bishop of Chester in 1932 and of London in 1939, and then succeeded William Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1944. Fisher served until 1961, presiding at the Coronation of Elizabeth II, and in 1960 was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to meet with the Pope since the English Reformation. He was made an Honorary Bencher in 1945.

Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Baron Fisher of Lambeth by Walter Stoneman. Bromide print, 1945. NPG x167551 © National Portrait Gallery, London. This image has been cropped and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode

Sir Richard Stafford Cripps was born in 1889 and, after studying Chemistry at University College London, gained admission to the Middle Temple in 1910 and was Called in 1913. After service as an ambulance driver in WWI, he spent the 1920s at the Bar before joining the Labour Party in 1930. Cripps was appointed Solicitor-General in 1931 and was elected MP for Bristol South East the same year, a seat he held until 1950. He served as Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1940, and in 1942 was appointed to Churchill's War Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons, later becoming Minister of Aircraft Production. Following the Second World War he served in Attlee's Labour government as President of the Board of Trade, and in 1947 was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Macmillan was born in 1894 and served on the front line in France during the First World War, fighting in engagements such as the First Battle of the Somme in 1916. He held various ministries under Churchill during the Second World War and succeeded Anthony Eden as Prime Minister in 1957. He was made an Honorary Bencher of the Inn the following year. Macmillan served until 1963, after which he involved himself in his family's Macmillan publishing house, and in his retirement was noted for his criticism of various of Thatcher's policies. He was made Earl of Stockton and Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden in 1984.

Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton by Elliott & Fry. Half-plate negative, April 1942. NPG x82084 © National Portrait Gallery, London. This image has been cropped and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode

Alfred Thompson ‘Tom’ Denning was born in 1899 in Hampshire and studied mathematics at Oxford. His studies were interrupted by service in the First World War. After undertaking further study in Jurisprudence, he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1921 and was Called in 1923. After just over twenty years at the Bar, he was appointed a High Court Judge in 1944 and then a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1948, a position in which he made several notable judgements. He continued to build his reputation in the House of Lords as a Law Lord before becoming Master of the Rolls in 1962, a position he held until retirement in 1982. He was made an Honorary Bencher of the Inn in 1972, and is remembered for his individualism and boldness.

Otto Kahn-Freund was born in 1900 in Frankfurt am Main, the only son of a German-Jewish family, receiving a strict and conventional Jewish upbringing. He was educated at the Goethe-Gymnasium, Frankfurt, read law at Frankfurt University and became a judge in the Berlin Labour Court in 1929. In 1933, shortly after Hitler seized the Chancellorship, he delivered a judgement following the principles of judicial independence in favour of radio technicians accused of Communist support. As a result of this judgement he was dismissed from the judiciary, interrogated and put under observation by the Gestapo. A few months later, he and his wife travelled on holiday to the United Kingdom - they did not return.

Kahn-Freund enrolled at the London School of Economics to study English Law, and in 1936 was Called to the Bar at the Middle Temple. He was later appointed a Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Oxford and became a fellow of Brasenose College in 1964. He became Queen’s Counsel in 1972 and was knighted in 1976. Made an Honorary Bencher in 1969, a QC in 1972 and knighted in 1976, Kahn-Freund is best known for the establishment of labour law as a separate area of study in Britain and was the senior lawyer on the Donovan Commission, which reported in 1968 and was highly significant in the development of British labour law.

Learie Constantine was born in Trinidad in 1901 to Lebrun Constantine, the grandson of enslaved people and the overseer of a cocoa estate. On leaving school in 1917 he was briefly clerk to a firm of solicitors, but his legal career was swiftly overtaken by a glittering career in professional cricket, as a member of the West Indies team and later several English clubs. Intending to return to the law, he was admitted to the Inn in 1944, although he continued playing and writing about cricket. In the late 1940s he served as chairman of the League of Coloured Peoples, president of the Caribbean Congress of Labour and a member of the Colonial Social Welfare Advisory Committee. He was Called to the Bar in 1954 and returned to Trinidad.

He became involved in politics and in 1956 became Trinidad’s Minister for Communications, Works and Utilities, later participating in negotiations leading to Trinidad’s independence from Great Britain. In 1962 he was knighted and appointed Trinidad and Tobago’s first High Commissioner in London, in which position he spoke out on domestic racial issues, and in 1963 he was made an Honorary Bencher of the Inn. He spent the remainder of his life living in London, writing and broadcasting on cricket, race and the Commonwealth, and in 1969 was awarded a life peerage, becoming the first black man to sit in the House of Lords. He died in 1971 and received a state funeral in Trinidad.

Learie Constantine by Godfrey Argent. Bromide print, 1 November 1967. NPG x21932 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Edward Akufo-Addo, born in Dodowa, Ghana, in 1906, was one of the founding fathers of the Republic of Ghana. In 1947 he became a founding member of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) and was one of the "Big Six" detained after disturbances in Accra in 1948. From 1949-1950, he was a member of the United Gold Coast Legislative Council and the Coussey Consititional Commission. After Ghana declared independence from British rule, Akufo-Addo was appointed a Supreme Court Judge and Chief Justice from 1966-1970. In 1970, he became the 2nd President of the Republic of Ghana serving until his deposition by a military coup d'état in 1972.

Burger was born in 1907 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and attended St. Paul College of Law in 1931. After a lengthy judicial career, he was made Chief Justice of the United states in 1969, an office he held until 1986. He was made an Honorary Bencher in 1971. In 1974 one of his court rulings played a pivotal role in President Nixon’s resignation after the Watergate Scandal.

Born in Hampstead and educated at Eton and Trinity, Cambridge, Griffith-Jones was Called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1928. Serving with the Coldstream Guards during the Second World War, he was awarded the Military Cross in 1943 and after the war was one of the prosecuting counsel at the Nuremburg Trials. Returning to the Bar in 1946, he was junior counsel for the prosecution of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, in 1955. He became Senior Treasury Counsel and a founding member of the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1959, and became known for prosecuting obscenity cases, most notably in 1960 when he led the prosecution of Penguin Books for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He served as Recorder of Grantham and of Coventry and in 1964 became a full time judge, presiding over criminal cases at the Old Bailey as the Common Serjeant of London until 1979.

Dudley Shelton Senanayake was born to the wealthy Senanayake family, which was active in colonial era politics. His father, Don Stephen Senanayake, led Ceylon’s (Sri Lanka's) independence movement and became its 1st Prime Minister. In 1935, Senanayake took oaths as an Advocate of the Supreme Court of Ceylon and succeeded his father as Minister of Agriculture and Lands in the second board of ministers of the state council in 1946. In 1947, he was elected to the first parliament of independent Ceylon and was reappointed to his ministry by his father. After the unexpected death of his father in 1952, Senanayake was appointed as the 2nd Prime Minister of Ceylon. In 1953, following widespread civil disobedience and strikes, he resigned from the position on the grounds of ill health. Senanayake returned to politics in 1957, winning a second term as Prime Minister in 1960. He resigned from the position only four months later and became leader of the opposition. He won his third and longest term as Prime Minister in 1965 and served for five years before being defeated in the 1970 elections. Senanayake is remembered for his legacy of simplicity, democratic toleration and moderation. He carried forward his father's legacy by continuing agricultural reforms and large-scale projects.

© Mrs P.K.Tennakoon. This image has been cropped and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode

Lee Kuan Yew was born in colonial Singapore in 1923, and was educated first in Singapore, and later at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge, where he graduated at the top of his cohort for Law. Having been admitted to the Inn in 1946, he was Called in 1950 and returned to Singapore to practice law. He became involved with Singaporean politics, founding the People's Action Party in 1954, and became the first Prime Minister of Singapore in 1959. He continued in this position through a 1963 union with Malaysia and then full independence for his nation in 1965, serving until 1990.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana and educated at Vassar College, Anne moved to Texas in 1950 and established herself in Republican politics. She served as Vice Chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1966-1968 and Co-Chairman of the RNC from 1971-1973. Named Counsellor to President Nixon in 1972 (continuing in the role under Gerald Ford), she later made history as the first female United States Ambassador the United Kingdom, appointed in 1976, being Called as an Honorary Bencher of the Inn in that year. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987, she served on the boards of many US corporations and non-profit organisations and was a member of the Founding Council of the Rothermere American Institute. She died in Houston in 2008.

Sir Lynden Pindling, born in Nassau in 1930, is regarded in the Bahamas as ‘the Father of the Nation. He studied law at King’s College, University of London from 1948 to 1952 and was admitted to the Inn in 1948, being Called to the Bar in 1953. At the end of 1953, Pindling joined the newly formed Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) as its legal advisor and was elected Parliamentary Leader of the party in 1956. On a day in 1965 known in Bahamian history as 'Black Tuesday', he delivered a dramatic speech in the House Assembly and ended it by throwing the Speaker's Mace into the street. He was elected Prime Minister in 1967 and formed the first black government in Bahamian history. Pindling led the Bahamas to independence from Great Britain on 10 July 1973. His government introduced social security measures such as a National Insurance Scheme, formed the College of The Bahamas, the Royal Bahamas Defence Force and other organisations. The PLP was defeated in the 1992 election and Pindling retired from politics soon thereafter.

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Benazir Bhutto, born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1953, was the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim majority nation. Ideologically a liberal and a secularist, she chaired the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which was founded by her father in 1967. She led the party to victory in the 1988 election. Her attempts at reform were stifled by conservative and Islamist forces and her administration was dismissed by the President of Pakistan in 1990 amid accusations of nepotism and corruption. She won a second term of office from 1993-1996. Pakistan experienced severe economic hardship in the 1990s and Bhutto was unable to pursue desired social programs due to a lack of financial resources. She was dismissed a second time for corruption and continued as Leader of the Opposition until 1999. She was assassinated in 2007.

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