Richard Sykes - obituary - Telegraph Some 20 years later the prosecutor's memoirs were published in The People, showing full evidence of Loughans's guilt. The rule of double jeopardy prevented his being retried. But when he sued from jail in 1963 the paper, Sykes's client, was found not to have libelled him because the prosecutor's account showed he had committed the crime. Sykes's senior partner wrote to him afterwards: "Your win is not only a personal triumph for you but a great morale uplift for the entire newspaper world." Another case was an appeal against an award of damages against the Telegraph for an allegation that the rugby star J P R Williams had been guilty of "shamateurism." A second hearing revealed that although there was confusion over the rules, Williams had received "boot money," and the paper's appeal was allowed. The same year Sykes left Simmons & Simmons to set up on his own, concentrating on The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator. Although he never made personal interventions, he was a welcome presence in court or consulting room, commenting on one litigant: "Nobody would give damages to that little s---." Another time, when a young barrister asked a conference involving boxing: "Who is Joe Louis?" Sykes commented, sotto voce: "Won't he make a magnificent judge one day?" - which, indeed, he now does. Sykes on 'Folly Rose' Sykes used to come into the Telegraph office on Friday night to enjoy a whisky as he read proofs of the Sunday paper. He was now able to spend more time sailing and painting watercolours at his home in the Essex village of Wivenhoe. When clients phoned, his wife used to pull a long string that would pass through the garden and along the jetty to ring a bell on his boat, Folly Rose. Wivenhoe offered him the congenial company of such journalists and philosophers as Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, George Gale, Henry Fairlie, Michael Oakeshott and Maurice Cowling, who were so concerned about the Left-ward drift of Conservatism that their talk eventually led to the formation of the Salisbury Group, named after the 19th-century prime minister. Sykes also helped to found the Salisbury Review, under the editorship of Roger Scruton. He represented a wide variety of other publications as well as private clients, among them Ray Honeyford, the headmaster who exposed the effects of multiculturalism in state schools, and an Essex farmer treated unfairly by the EEC. He helped to save the Surtees Society, devoted to the 19th-century novelist R S Surtees, and sat on the Lord Chancellor's committee that led to the 1996 Defamation Act. When the Conservative Party dumped Mrs Thatcher, Sykes declared that he would never vote for it again after such treachery, and in later life he preferred to watch the Al Jazeera news channel. Fiercely opposed to the EU, he flew the Canadian flag near his boat when Spanish fishing boats entered Canada's waters. Inevitably, Sykes did not always win. In 1999 he was closing down his practice to retire when Jonathan Aitken asked him to fight charges of perjury and perverting the course of justice. For more than two years Sykes remained in harness, taking on an assistant for the first time and moving his office near to Aitken's home. When Aitken was forced to admit he had lied about paying a bill at the Paris Ritz he apologised to Sykes, who swallowed any resentment and visited him in jail. On Sundays, Sykes would take his Greek Old Testament to the 8am service at Wivenhoe's St Mary the Virgin Church to check the readings. He married, in 1954, Stella Findlay, who survives him with two sons and a daughter. Richard Sykes, born September 14 1926, died October 30 2014