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OPUS • Issue 7 • Autumn 2012
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Peter Lodder QC –
2012 Prize Giving Guest of Honour Whether the skills honed as an active member of PGS Debating Society help Peter Lodder as one of the country’s leading criminal barristers is not known, but the surviving school records suggest that he was no stranger to winning arguments in a challenging environment. Peter joined the Portsmouth Grammar School as a fifteen year old from King’s School, Gloucester. He was noted as being ‘sensible’ and ‘clearheaded’ as well as demonstrating resourcefulness, enthusiasm, intelligence and confidence, qualities which served him well as a Prefect and which made him popular with his fellow pupils. His sporting interests included tennis and hockey and he was a member of the triumphant Grant House team in the 1975 hockey league. Peter’s grandfathers had been a milkman and a bus driver, and his father joined the Royal Navy as a boy sailor and rose through the ranks to become an officer. Sadly, he died before Peter started at university, but no doubt he would have taken pride in the fact that Peter was the first member of his family to go to
university and graduate, and the first to enter the legal profession. He gained his Law degree at the University of Birmingham and, to finance his training, worked as a court clerk at the Old Bailey during the week and as a factory worker from 6am to 10pm on Saturdays and Sundays. A turning point came when Peter won the Jules Thorn Senior Law Scholarship, an award made by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple and reported in The Portmuthian in 1983. This award enabled Peter to concentrate on qualifying as a barrister. Peter has been a Recorder of the Crown Court since 2000, and was appointed a QC in 2001. “Taking silk” has resulted in Peter taking on a wider range of challenging and serious cases. He has an extensive practice
in serious and complex fraud and moneylaundering cases, and a heavy workload in general crime including murder, drug and confiscation cases and high-profile road traffic cases. Peter’s views on high-profile trials and changes in the law are often sought by the media, and he has contributed to many topical programmes, including Unreliable Evidence and The One Show. Last year the Government’s legal aid proposals prompted Peter to write that the cuts “would leave many children, vulnerable people and families without any meaningful access to justice.” Peter was elected as Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association in 2008-9, ViceChairman of the Bar in the following year and Chairman of the Bar in 2011.
Address by Peter Lodder QC : My car was broken into recently; my children thought it was incredibly funny that not one of my CDs was stolen. So I am well aware of the generational difference between this former pupil and you current pupils. It is a privilege and a pleasure to be here. Thank you Headmaster for the generous comments you have made about my career. I am reminded of that great US Statesman Adlai Stevenson: “It is OK to listen to praise, so long as you don’t inhale it.” With such an introduction you might have expected the signs of early promise to appear in a catalogue of school achievements. But you will search in vain for my name in past prize giving records. Mine was a modest performance. However it was a very important time in my life. I come from a Portsmouth family with a little character: In the mid 1870s, my great-great uncle (then a young sailor in his twenties) had his hands amputated after they were crushed in an accident on his ship in the dockyard. He was fitted with two metal hooks and earned his keep each day on the seafront renting out a telescope to passers-by to look at the fleet. “Hooks” liked pubs and was highly skilled at sliding a pint glass across the bar with one hook so that it dropped into the middle of the other hook without spillage.
Every generation has inspirational teachers; for me that person was Ted Washington. Ted lost his sight in a terrible school cricket accident at the outset of his career at PGS, but he continued to teach history at the school until retirement. He maintained firm discipline, and remembered the voice and correct seating position of every boy in his classes. I had only been here for a few months, when my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Ted Washington remained strict but also showed great kindness. He was a model for coping with adversity. Certainly what I learned is that life is what you make of it. Especially if you are a little creative…. A few years later, in 1981, I was travelling through India. I was a passenger on a motorbike being driven by an Iranian student. We were heading for Bombay/ Mumbai where we had reserved a bit of deck space on an old steamer, which sailed along the west coast to a then little known place called Goa. As we drove down the main street in Pune a taxi pulled straight out in front of us and we collided. Immediately a gaggle of people gathered, and the irate taxi man declaimed hypocritically against bad foreign drivers. I was worried that we would miss our boat, but I was even more alarmed when my companion confessed that he had mislaid his driving licence. Fortunately I had mine so we ducked down, crawled out of the crowd, swapped crash helmets and then
crawled back in, just in time for the arrival of the police officer. It was clear I was destined to be a lawyer. My early training was in general commonlaw, which covered a wide range of civil work. Newly qualified, I was instructed in a trial for a respondent insurance company. The claimant’s camera was stolen whilst he was on holiday. He had taken it to the beach. When he decided to swim, being on his own, he buried the camera in the sand under his towel. On his return it had gone. The insurance company refused to pay out. They accepted that he was entitled to take it to the beach but maintained that he had not done enough to look after it. He was incensed and taking a point of principle, sued. I was instructed to maintain the insurer’s robust stance before the idiosyncratic judge at the Southend County Court. As the claimant’s barrister was about to start, the Judge cut straight across and went for me. “What do you say he should have done?” Not entirely confident of this part of my case, I repeated the insurer’s suggestion that he should have put camera into a waterproof bag and then worn it around his neck as he swam.
“Don’t be ridiculous Mr Lodder” came the Judicial retort, “He might have been mugged by an octopus.”
My Father also joined the Royal Navy, starting as a boy sailor and eventually becoming an officer. So although we moved often, we regularly returned to Portsmouth and that is how I came to PGS in 1973. Names from the staff room I knew have slipped into legend: Ray Clayton (so recently died), John Hopkinson, Max Snelling and John Marsh to name but a few. Geography Field Weeks in the Lake District remain a fond memory.
Peter Lodder QC with Headmaster James Priory
Presenting the Neil Blewett Award to Taylor Langford Smith OP (1998-2012). The Award is presented in recognition of the dedication of a pupil who is a true ambassador of the school and whose achievements have been accomplished in the spirit of the school’s values.
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