Celebrate the life: Master Stephen Brown

The Right Honourable Sir Stephen Brown, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (GBE), awarded the Chevalier de la Legion D’honneur by France (twice) and the Russian Commemorative Medal (again twice), QC, judge of the High Court and Court of Appeal, President of the Family Division, was born on 3 October 1924. He died on 1 October 2025, just two days short of his 101st birthday.

Whilst we are gathered here in sadness that a wonderful and most valuable life has ended, we do not meet in shock that a man of such an age should have died. We are here to remember Stephen with warmth and pleasure as we recall all that he did and all that he meant to us during the 36,862 days of his long life.

We are here to remember Stephen with warmth and pleasure as we recall all that he did and all that he meant to us…

Before embarking on these few words, I should justify my presence here. Stephen was 30 years older than me. Whilst I joined the same small chambers in Birmingham that he had headed, Stephen was already a High Court judge, having been appointed in 1975. And, although I typed this script sitting at the desk that Stephen will have used as President of the Family Division, by the time I was made a judge in 2005, Stephen had been retired for six years. Thus, as many of you will, I hope, have spotted as I walked towards the lectern, I was neither a contemporary nor close colleague. Nevertheless, our paths crossed a good many times, through the Birmingham connection and, more particularly, during Stephen’s time as President when I, and others, worked closely with him around the implementation of the Children Act 1989. Much more recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephen to mark his 100th birthday. On that occasion we spent well over an hour together. During that time, it was clear that, whatever physical limitation he may have had, his intellect, his memory, his humour and his humanity were as chipper as ever.

First, some basic coordinates: Stephen Brown was born in Staffordshire to Wilfrid Brown and Nora Elizabeth Brown. He attended Malvern College. In later years, he served as Chair of governors for that school for nearly two decades.

Stephen will have been around 16 years old at the outbreak of war. Although he went up to study law at Queens’ College, Cambridge on leaving Malvern, very soon, at the age of 19, he joined the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve (the RNVR). His ship, the HMS Scourge, was engaged in escorting The Arctic Convoy of ships bringing vital supplies to Russia through the channel of sea between the Arctic ice and the German occupied Norwegian coast.

The Scourge, an S Class Destroyer, then took part in D-Day. Its role was to open up bombardment of the German gun batteries an hour or so before the landings began. As Stephen told me when we met in 2024, “Well, the Germans had nothing else to do but to shoot at us”. We can all pause and think just what that experience must have been like for a 19 year old and, indeed, everyone else on board.

After D-Day it was back to the Arctic, and after the war, in 1946 it was back to Cambridge for two more years. The contrast between all that he had seen in the awfulness of war, and the tranquillity of Cambridge was, Stephen agreed, hard to adapt to. He told me “they called us ‘The Returning Warriors’”, which of course they were.

He completed his studies and was called to the Bar by The Inner Temple in 1949. He commenced practice in Birmingham. In 1951, Stephen married Patricia Ann Good, daughter of Richard Good from Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire. It was a marriage that lasted nearly 70 years, ending with Pat’s death in 2020.

In those days, the various sets of chambers in Birmingham were dotted around buildings in Temple Row. Stephen’s set was in the Law Library building at 8 Temple Street. In a feat of collective endeavour, which is rare at the Bar, the various sets came together in the 1960s to finance and build a purpose-made block conveniently located 100 yards from the main law courts. Stephen was at the forefront of this project and was justly proud of Fountain Court, which came to house eight sets of chambers. It not only provided modern and convenient premises, it also did a great deal to create a feeling of collegiality between the various sets and to provide cohesion for the Birmingham Bar as a whole. Stephen’s set became No 2 Fountain Court. He told me that the sets had been allocated by lottery and “We were lucky to get No 2”. “Why?” I asked. “Well, it was only one floor up” came the reply.

Alan Taylor, who was Stephen’s pupil in 1962, tells me that Stephen’s practice was widely based, taking in both criminal and civil work, together with planning. Alan recalls travel to all parts of the Oxford circuit, particularly Stoke and Stafford and, of course, Birmingham. The Midland and Oxford circuits later merged in 1969, but, as Stephen told me with a broad smile, “oh, there was still rivalry and real division!”

Time for some more basic coordinates:

Stephen was appointed Deputy Chairman of Staffordshire Quarter Sessions from 1963 to 1971, and Recorder of West Bromwich from 1965 to 1971, when the system changed, with assizes and quarter sessions being abolished, at which time he was made a Recorder.

He took silk in 1966. As was the custom then for a regional practitioner becoming a QC, he joined a set of London chambers, 1 Paper Buildings and soon became its Head. From 1972 to 1975 Stephen sat on the Butler Committee inquiring into the treatment of criminal psychiatric patients and the subsequent protection of the public when they are released. This followed the conviction of a 24-year-old man of murdering two of his workmates in a photographic laboratory. The man’s employers had not been told that he was a former Broadmoor patient who had poisoned his father, his sister and a schoolfriend 10 years earlier.

Stephen was appointed as a High Court judge and knighted in 1975. He was initially assigned to the Family Division, but, in 1977 he transferred to the Queen’s Bench Division.

The Lord Chancellor’s decision to place the new judge in the Family Division was slightly left field, as Stephen’s practice had not included many, if any, family cases. But, as we shall see, those two years in family may have played a significant part in subsequent events.

For four, no doubt very happy years, Stephen was Presiding Judge of the Midland and Oxford Circuit from 1977 to 1981. From my own experience, there are few judicial roles better than that of being a presider on your own Circuit. During this time, just as he had done with Fountain Court when at the Bar, Stephen was instrumental in establishing new Judges Lodgings in Birmingham.

In a feat of collective endeavour, which is rare at the Bar, the various sets came together in the 1960s to finance and build a purpose-made block conveniently located 100 yards from the main law courts. Stephen was at the forefront of this project and was justly proud of Fountain Court, which came to house eight sets of chambers. It not only provided modern and convenient premises, it also did a great deal to create a feeling of collegiality between the various sets and to provide cohesion for the Birmingham Bar as a whole.

I joined the Birmingham Bar during his time as presider. I was the lowest form of barristerial life. To me, Mr Justice Stephen Brown was in the stratosphere – even though he was still known in chambers by his nickname of ‘stainless Stephen’.

In 1983, he was appointed Lord Justice of Appeal and, with it, membership of the Privy Council. During this time, in 1988, Stephen was one of three judges, together with Lord Chief Justice Geoffrey Lane, hearing the first appeal made by the Birmingham Six, who had been convicted of the IRA Birmingham Pub Bombings in 1975. I will not dwell on that case, but, when we met, both of us had a ready recall of one night during that time when there was a grand dinner at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens to mark the opening, that day, by Her Majesty the Queen Mother of the new Law Courts in the City. Security at the event was at the highest level. Stephen’s recollection was:

“I remember that evening very well indeed. I was sitting in London with Geoffrey Lane and others. We left early. I changed into my black tie on the train and we had a police escort at Birmingham New Street to go to the Botanical Gardens.”

Changing in the loo, followed by a police escort; high living indeed!

After five years in the Court of Appeal, Stephen was appointed to be President of the Family Division, a post that he held for 11 years until retirement at age 75 in 1999 – making him the longest serving PFD, so far.

The President had, hitherto, always been appointed from amongst the senior judges of the Division. When the vacancy occurred, on the retirement of Sir John Arnold, Margaret Thatcher, as Prime Minister, decreed that that practice must change and the appointment should be drawn from amongst the Court of Appeal judges. In that context, Sir Stephen’s previous experience as a Family judge will not have been irrelevant and, coupled with his other undoubted attributes as a senior judge and leader, he was appointed to be the PFD.

I put that story to Stephen. He could not recall it, but he was clear that the appointment of a Court of Appeal judge to the post really changed things and put the Family Division firmly on the map. I am sure that is right, and I am equally sure that the manner in which Stephen Brown discharged the role during those 11 very influential years contributed far more to the enhancement of Family justice than the simple fact that he had been a Court of Appeal judge.

During his time as President, Stephen showed great kindness to David Hershman and to me, two young unknown barristers, as we began to write a book on children law. He was then, and throughout all the years that followed, immensely supportive to me and I will remain forever grateful for his generosity.

Standing back, we are thinking about a man who not only did the day job, but, it would seem, at every stage went the extra mile and more. Spotting something that needed to be done and then stepping up to lead the doing of it.

In the Birmingham chambers, at a time when the clerks recorded all bookings for work in a handwritten diary, if a barrister was due to sit as a part-time judge it would go into the book as ‘PD’, meaning ‘public duty’. Stephen Brown demonstrated a commitment to public duty in the widest sense throughout his life. From the decks of HMS Scourge, to the building of Fountain Court, leading his chambers in both Birmingham and London, serving on the Butler Inquiry, chairing the governors at Malvern, serving with conspicuous distinction as a judge for 24 years, being President of the Family Division, to hearing the most taxing of cases, he saw that there was a job that needed to be done, and he did it to the best of his immense ability.

What was he like in court? I have my own memories, but I cannot better the description that Peter Jackson, now Lord Justice, has given:

“I appeared in front of Sir Stephen regularly as a junior in the 90s. He set the tone with his brisk way of coming into court, his smartness and his ramrod posture. He was always kindly, but like the Ancient Mariner he held you with his glittering eye in a way that discouraged any unmeritorious submissions.”

“He is insufficiently remembered for the extremely high quality of his judgments, probably because he was not given to generalising. He wrote beautifully, telling the story with clarity and authority. He conferred dignity on people in distress. For example, the father of Tony Bland was “a splendid straightforward Yorkshireman”. But where criticism was called for, he had the words for that too. We have all seen people being dismantled by judges over many a long page, but for me no reproach was more powerful as that delivered in two words by Sir Stephen to my clients when he said that he regarded their conduct as being ‘most unworthy’. And it was.”

At the close of my interview with him I asked:

Of all the stages of your career – young barrister, busy barrister, silk, High Court Judge, Court of Appeal and President – which time did you enjoy most?

Sir Stephen: Well, I haven’t really researched that!

McF: I get the feeling you’ve enjoyed all of it?

Sir Stephen: I did. There have been fearful times, when you were scared stiff, when one never felt very certain about how things were going. But I think it’s gone extremely well, which is very fortunate. Put it like that. There is a great deal of very good fortune about it and it says a lot about the company that you’re with and the people you are dealing with. We were a band of brothers, I’m sure.

McF: Last question: if you were talking to a youngster about to start off in a career at the Bar what advice would you give them?

Sir Stephen: Don’t expect too much too soon. You have got to pick up by getting yourself used to speaking to people and taking issues as they come. Don’t expect it all to be laid out as a career. No, it’s all full of surprises. Remember you are dealing with human nature, that is the important thing.

As I said at the start of this address, we are here to remember, with warmth and gratitude, a man of real intellect, humour and great humanity. He lived such a long time, but I do not imagine that many of those days were wasted. He was not one of life’s passengers; on the contrary, he was at the helm in so many ways. Stephen Brown’s was a long, long life that was profoundly well lived and we are all grateful to have been some part of it.

The Rt Hon Sir Andrew McFarlane
President of the Family Division 2018–April 2026
Treasurer of Gray’s Inn 2026