Sir Denys Roberts - Telegraph His appointment as chief justice a year later caused controversy as he had never previously been a judge and had not appeared in court as an advocate since the mid-1960s. Among the challenges that confronted him was the inadequacy of the Supreme Court's temporary home in a former French mission: the Court of Appeal occupied what had once been the chapel. He commissioned a starkly modern new building which opened in 1984, and also opened courts in outlying towns. Roberts sat on the bench in a variety of far-flung appointments for 25 years. By tradition Hong Kong's senior judge was also chief justice of Brunei, and after leaving Hong Kong (to be succeeded by the first Chinese chief justice there, Sir TL Yang), Roberts continued in the Brunei role, and later as president of the Sultanate's Court of Appeal. He was also president of the Court of Appeal of Bermuda, and after the 1997 handover to China he was a non-permanent judge of Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal . At his last Legislative Council meeting as chief secretary in 1978, Roberts happened also to be "acting Governor" in Maclehose's temporary absence abroad - and took the opportunity to deliver a tongue-in-cheek testimonial to his own "somewhat obscure" role in Hong Kong's affairs and the moderate quality of his drafting skills, which he claimed had contributed much to the prosperity of local lawyers. Others present were more fulsome, however. Roberts, said the senior Chinese member, would long be remembered for his clarity and sagacity, and as "a person of massive and imperturbable reliability." The son of a barrister, Denys Tudor Emil Roberts was born in London on January 19 1923. He was educated at Aldenham School and went up to Wadham College, Oxford, to read Law until his studies were interrupted by war service. Commissioned in the Royal Artillery, he served in France, the Low Countries and Germany until the end of the war, and thereafter in India. On demobilisation he returned to Oxford and played minor counties cricket for Hertfordshire until being called to the Bar in 1950 by Lincoln's Inn - where he became a Bencher in 1978. Joining the Colonial Service in 1953, he became a crown counsel in Nyasaland. After representing the administration there in "a disastrous inquiry" he found himself - according to what he described as the bureaucratic principle that a debacle should always be presented as a success - offered promotion to attorney general of Gibraltar, where he took Silk in 1960. He had been on the Rock only two years when he was offered another upward move, to become solicitor general in Hong Kong - this time, he surmised, because he had annoyed the governor of Gibraltar by shouting at his ADC over the conduct of a military parade. Roberts was the author of a series of light comic novels of legal and colonial life in his pre-Hong Kong days. He went on to publish How to Dispense with Lawyers (1964) and Doing them Justice (1986), and in retirement he turned his hand to memoirs, with I'll Do Better Next Time (1995) and, covering his Army days, Yes Sir, But (2000). Finally, Another Disaster (2006) caught the authentic flavour of civil service life in 1960s Hong Kong, including the long-running issue of whether diminutive Chinese legislators should be obliged to wear morning coats on Armistice Day. Roberts also catalogued the attributes necessary in a judge, including humility, the ability to doze discreetly, and skill in self-defence, because "there is nothing more undignified than a judge being hurled into a horse trough by an angry plaintiff." In retirement Roberts made his home in Norfolk. A keen watcher of cricket, he was president of MCC in 1989-90; among the highlights of his tenure was his participation alongside Sir Don Bradman in the opening of the Bradman Museum at Bowral in Australia. He was appointed OBE in 1960 and CBE in 1970, and knighted in 1975. He married first, in 1949, Brenda Marsh, with whom he had a son and a daughter. The marriage was dissolved in 1973, and he married, secondly, in 1985, Fiona Alexander, a barrister who had appeared before him representing the government in appeal cases; they had a son. Sir Denys Roberts, born January 19 1923, died May 19 2013