Quentin Edwards

Bradfield College

Edwards was born in Alexandria, Egypt,[1] the son of a shipbroker, H. J. Edwards, and had an exotic childhood there.[2] While he was at Bradfield College, he struck up a friendship with John Mortimer, who became infatuated with him, leading to passionate letters from Mortimer.[3] When found by a schoolmaster, in July 1942, these resulted in Mortimer being sent down from Oxford, and Edwards being "asked not to return" to Bradfield; at the age of seventeen, during the Second World War, he then went to work on a farm on the Berkshire Downs, where he burnt the letters.[4] He also worked briefly in a factory before joining the Royal Navy in 1943.[2][5]

Middle Temple Hall

Edwards left the Navy in 1946 and began to read law at the Middle Temple. He was called to the bar from there in 1948 and became an expert in ecclesiastical law.[2] Unusually, he was elected as a bencher of his inn, before achieving other senior appointments, a mark of popularity.[1] In December 1974, he was appointed a Recorder,[6] in April 1975 a Queen's Counsel,[7] and in 1982 a circuit judge on the south eastern circuit.[8] He continued in that post for fifteen years, and was also Chancellor in two dioceses, Chichester and Blackburn.[1] In his specialist field of ecclesiastical law, Edwards was a contributor to Halsbury's Laws of England.[2]

On the day after he had been called to the bar,[9] 18 November 1948, at St Mary Abbots, Kensington, Edwards married Barbara Marion Guthrie, the daughter of Colonel A. Guthrie, late Royal Engineers, of Hampstead. His mother was no longer alive, and his father was living at Rannoch Lodge, Burgess Hill, West Sussex.[5] With his wife, Edwards had a daughter and two sons, Charlotte, Adam, and Simon.[10] Barbara Edwards died in 2006.[2]

The Times said of Edwards in an obituary that he was a dandy and a Wodehouse-style figure, "instantly recognisable with his abundant sidewhiskers, half-moon spectacles and rosy cheeks", and that he was at his happiest at race meetings, especially Royal Ascot, Newmarket, Cheltenham, and the greyhound races at Hackney.[1] In his ecclesiastical role, he would visit churches in the morning and then go to a race meeting in the afternoon.[1] Christopher Hill recalled that Edwards was "a stickler for propriety and good manners ... quixotic, urbane, and wickedly amusing ... occasionally irascible."[2]

Edwards lived in Highgate, North London, for some fifty years and became a well-known supporter of community activities there.[1] He died on 19 December 2010.[11]

• Quentin Tytler Edwards, Shaw's Guide to Rent Control and the Increase of Rents (London: Shaw & Sons, 1957)