Sir Humphrey Potts - Telegraph Francis Humphrey Potts was born on August 18 1931 and grew up at Penshaw, Co Durham, where his father farmed on the Lambton estate. He attended the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle - which was evacuated to Penrith during the war - where his friends included Peter Taylor, the future Lord Chief Justice, and Geoffrey Bindman, the leading human rights solicitor. After reading Law at St Catherine's Society, Oxford, Potts read for the Bar at Lincoln's Inn as a Tancred Student and Cholmeley Scholar. He was called in 1955, and entered chambers at 51 Westgate Road, Newcastle, which Taylor had joined the previous year. Potts did a mixture of criminal and civil work, much of the latter involving either insurance claims or litigation against factories and the Coal Board. The Bar at Newcastle was then relatively small but enjoying a golden era, and Potts was among a quintet (himself, Taylor, Roderick Smith, Wilfred Steer and Jim Chadwin) known as "The Lions of the North." Potts himself had a commanding presence as an advocate and was utterly fearless in his cross-examination. His capacity to sway a jury lay in good part in the fact that he was a transparently decent man, with a self-deprecating demeanour that was as endearing as it was genuine. He disliked pretension and long-windedness, and could never be accused of either. Though clearly clever and well-informed, he always wore his learning lightly. After taking Silk in 1971, Potts followed Taylor down to London, and joined him at the set of chambers headed by George (later Lord Justice) Waller, QC, at 11 King's Bench Walk in the Temple. He became a Recorder the next year. Following his appointment as a Judge of the High Court, Queen's Bench Division, he served as Presiding Judge on the North Eastern Circuit from 1988 to 1991. Potts's other high-profile cases on the bench included the 1992 libel trial in which the South African columnist Jani Allan failed to convince the High Court jury that she had not had an affair with the neo-Nazi leader Eugene Terre Blanche. In 1999, at the Old Bailey, Potts presided at the trial of the 78-year-old former British Rail ticket inspector Anthony Sawoniuk for the murder of Jews while working as a Nazi collaborator in his native Belarus in 1942. Sawoniuk had fled Belarus at the end of the war and had lived incognito in Britain ever since. However, after an extraordinary investigation involving help from the KGB and witnesses from the Belarussian town where the atrocities took place, he was eventually traced to a house in Bermondsey. It was the first and only trial in Britain under the War Crimes Act (1991), and involved a trip to Belarus for Potts, counsel and the jury. After being found guilty, Sawoniuk was sentenced by Potts to two life sentences. He died in prison in 2005. In 2001, in his last case, Potts refused to approve an application by the fugitive tycoon Asil Nadir to have the fraud charges against him dropped on the ground that he would be unable to receive a fair trial. Potts said that this would be "an affront to the public conscience." This year Nadir was found guilty of stealing some £29 million from Polly Peck. Potts's other appointments included membership of the Mental Health Review Tribunal from 1984 until 1986, and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in 1985-1986. He was a member of the Parole Board from 1992 to 1995 and vice-chairman until 1996. He was the first chairman of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission from 1997 until 2001. During the Archer trial, Potts was described by one newspaper as looking like "an angry, broad-faced farmer," yet beneath his occasionally intimidating exterior he was kind and considerate with a sunny, unstuffy disposition which brightened the atmosphere of courtrooms. Though in limited circles he was known as "Porridge Potts," he was not thought of as an especially heavy sentencer. Away from the Law, he was a keen traveller and enjoyed walking and gardening at his home in the Cheviots. He married, in 1971, Philippa Margaret Campbell (née Croke). She survives him with their two sons and his two stepsons. Sir Humphrey Potts, born August 18 1931, died December 2 2012