Farewell to Trinity

I met Michael in the President's Lodgings, a Victorian house of elegant proportions in the grounds of Trinity College. We talked in the drawing room which runs the length of the house.

The view from the back is of the President's private garden, beyond which the eye is drawn to Garden Quad, where a wisteria blooms in full glory on the side of a Christopher Wren building, and lawns which sweep down to the dark blue gates on Parks Road.

These are the gates they say were shut when Charles I left Oxford to go, eventually, to his execution and will not open until a Stuart king sits on the throne once again.

Michael, the elder son of well-known historian, political thinker, polymath, and founding principal of Buckingham University, Max Beloff (later to be created Lord Beloff), was born in Adlington, Cheshire, where his father taught at the University of Manchester.

When Michael was seven, the family moved to Oxford, his father having taken up a teaching post at Nuffield College and one foot has stayed in Oxford ever since.

He first attended Greycoats School, then the Dragon School. This was followed by Eton, where he studied alongside David (Lord) Sainsbury, William Waldegrave, scions of various breweries (Courage, Whitbread, Tollemache), William and Richard of Gloucester and Prince (later King) Birendra of Nepal who was murdered by his own son in 2001 blue ribboned boys all. Friendships and codes of conduct for life were formed there and have lasted to this day.

At 16, he won a place at King's College, Cambridge but, having accepted, he withdrew as an open Demyship (scholarship) from Magdalen College, Oxford, came along shortly afterwards.

Unlike many young people of that era, desperate to get away from parents and break out on their own, he could think of nothing better than to come home to Oxford and study there.

His father received a surprised letter from the Provost of King's College who could not comprehend anyone having the temerity to turn down the offer of a place at his college.

No doubt Max Bellof had to write a very tactful letter but wordsmiths run in the Beloff family.

On arriving at University, Michael, who describes himself as a "bit of a runner," made enquiries about the sport, but coincided at Magdalen College with a certain Adrian Metcalfe.

So impressed was the young fresher by his contemporary's athletic abilities that he decided that, if this was the standard of one person within one college, the others must be "out of sight".

He laughingly says that, there and then, he accepted the fact that he had peaked when he won the 100-yard sprint at Eton and took up politics and smoking instead.

He did go on running of course, famously in a relay race for Achilles (a club restricted to Oxbridge athletics blues but, of which, Michael became an honorary member three decades on) with Jeffrey Archer, British International Mike Hogan and the same Adrian Metcalfe who was, of course, to become an Olympic medallist.

Apart from the occasional celebratory cigar the smoking was firmly given up after his finals, but the interest in politics continued.

What prompted him to study Law? Corny as it may sound, his parents advised it (his maternal grandfather was a member of the Imperial Russian Bar) and he says they were quite right.

"I tell students today, it is surprising how often your parents are right. My first love was debating and one of the big attractions of attending Oxford University was the lure of the Oxford Union with the superior reputation it had."

He remembers, as an eight-year-old schoolboy, standing on benches to speak, with people kicking his back as they sat in the high window seats dangling their legs behind him.

President of the debating society at Eton, and winner of the prestigious Loder Declamation Prize, he thrived in the Union environment, and in due course, became President.

His Union career culminated in the Oxford Union Debating Tour of the USA, which he undertook, along with Jonathan Aitken, in 1964. This year out in America produced a book entitled A Short Walk on the Campus, published in 1965.

None of this extra-curricular activity stopped him obtaining degrees in history (first class) and in law, completed in only five terms. He was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1967 and married Judith, a barrister, in 1969.His face lit up as he recounted the story.

"I was still teaching in Oxford at the weekends. We got married in the morning, and I gave a seminar in the afternoon an undergraduate of that time and now a South African High Court Judge has recently reminded me with a glass of champagne in hand and holding my wife on my knee as I spoke." Something, I suspect, only a handful of people could get away with!

Practising law, rather than teaching it, took Michael and Judith to London, where they bought a house in Islington and struggled to pay their £12,000 mortgage. They had a son, who is now a practising barrister, and a daughter who is a solicitor. The first grandchild (another Max) arrived last year and is, of course, the pride and joy of his grandparents.

It was at about this point during my interview with Michael that we had our first interruption the fire alarm went off. "Don't worry", the President reassured me, "It's only a drill but we must go outside."

This proved to be rather useful as I then met his wife, Judith.

On returning to the elegant drawing room I asked Michael if he would subscribe to the theory that behind every successful man there have done what I have done without Judith. She has supported me in everything."

Michael became a Queen's Counsel in 1981; a Recorder from 1984; a Deputy High Court Judge from 1989-96 and a Judge of the Court of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey from 1995.

Why didn't enter the political arena, I asked?

"I didn't because I can always see both sides of an argument. I am not a partisan. It is true I joined the Labour Party briefly when I was 18, but I haven't belonged to any Party at all since my student days.

He went on to explain that one would be just as likely to bump into William Hague as Cherie Booth at a dinner party in the Lodgings (or, for that matter, Law Lords or Olympic medallists).

"I enjoy talking to people who know what's going on in the world," he explains. Ah, the world. I ask him about his travels. He has, after all, been used as a legal consultant and lecturer across the globe.

"I love travelling," he said. But he has never been tempted to live abroad.

"Oxford is home, Britain is the best place to be."

"Despite its problems?" I ask. He looked at me quizzically. "Despite its problems," he replies. I have a house in Holland Park and a house in Park Town and for me that is just perfect."

I asked him if he had favourite places in Oxfordshire.

"Yes, the lovely small towns. When the children were young a typical day out would be a drive to Burford after which I would run towards Stow on the Wold eight or nine miles until my wife, who has had tea with the children, would catch me up in the car, to my relief!"

The sentimental side of him sent him, during the Manchester Commonwealth Games, where he arbitrated, on a pilgrimage looking for the old house in Manchester. The street is still there and the numbers but where the house stood is now a block of flats. He had to report back to his mother that he found the spot, but not the building.

At this point we suffered our second interruption a telephone call.

"That was Paddy Ashdown," said the President. "He left his coat behind when he came to dinner last night."

Michael Beloff has had many interesting clients over the years. Kevin Maxwell, David Coultard, Iraqi Airways after the Gulf war Tottenham Hotspur Football Club and the Church of Scientology to name but a few.

Unlike some barristers he has not restricted the cases he takes on to those destined to win. He reminds me of the actress Michele Dotrice who once complained that having played Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov she is remembered only for being Betty in Some Mothers Do Ave Em.

Michael's Dotrice moment' was not a comedy but a soap opera. He represented Gillian Taylforth of EastEnders fame when she sued the Sun newspaper for libel and lost. Somehow this sticks in the collective public memory. In fact it was only one in a string of high-profile cases.

By the time the headship of Trinity was in the air his caseload had become stressfully high (56 cases in 1994). He turned down the offer to become a High Court Judge, which many of his peers believed would have led in time to the highest legal office in the land, and came back to Oxford instead.

Not that just being head of an Oxford college was enough for this man who seems to manage to lead three lives to everyone else's one.

He has combined the Presidency of Trinity with still going up to his Chambers in London at least once a week, judging in the Channel Islands and sitting on numerous tribunals and panels, all this without ever missing a Governing Body meeting in college.

An area close to his heart is the one he has made his own: sports arbitration. He is the only lawyer in the world to have sat on a panel for three consecutive sets of Olympic Games: Atlanta, Sidney and Athens and three sets of Commonwealth Games: Kuala Lumpur, Manchester and Melbourne.

He was also on a special Arbitral panel for the FIFA World Cup in 2002. Mention any sports person who has been banned, or just saved from being banned, and the chances are Michael Beloff was either on the board that did the banning or was the advocate who got the person off. His deep sense of fair play and a personal interest in sport makes him the ideal man for the job.

What about Trinity itself? Michael Beloff says it was the only college that would have seriously considered him for Head of House because he had once taught there.

"I feel especially privileged to be at Trinity. It is a remarkably friendly college. There are no cliques. There is no member of the governing body I would not be very happy to sit next to at a dinner."

He hugely enjoys contact with the young. "I like talent scouting," he said.

That is how he persuaded Cherie Booth to join the Chambers which he once headed. "Yes, I probably have directed quite a few young people into law," he admited.

Modestly he does not claim any credit. "Cause and effect," he repeats the phrase more than once during our hour's talk. I take this to mean the young person had the potential and he had the ability to spot it and nurture it.

"I always had a ten year game plan in relation to Trinity," he told me, "culminating in the 450th Centenary celebrations in 2005."

Every president brings something different to the college: Michael has known the last four personally including Norrington the President who entered into the arrangement with Blackwell's bookshop that created the space that now is the Norrington Room in the basement.

Was it a daunting task to follow these great heads of house?

"No, actually there has been a sense of having being buoyed up by them, standing on giants' shoulders as it were. When you look at the portraits of 26 past presidents and know that you are joining them it's, well, it's a very special feeling."

"One thing I have learnt is the tremendous power of the brand name, Oxford University. It has opened doors for me all over the world."

What will he be remembered for at Trinity?

Well, the students love him to bits. He always has an open door for them and is generous with his counsel.

He has become a benchmark for fairness in the University.

"Level playing fields" and "straight down the middle" are his life motifs.

He has run a happy ship and leaves it in good shape, not least in practical terms. There is a scholarship in memory of his father and the college has benefited from bequests left to it, not just by alumni, something you might expect, but by individuals who have been so impressed on meeting him that they have amended their wills accordingly.

"If I ever write my autobiography, not that I am planning to," he twinkles at me, "I already have my opening sentence: "Three of my four grandparents were gold medallists at the University of St Petersburg; the fourth was a chemist from Pinsk he made the money."

As I left the grounds of Trinity College I was aware that I was leaving an institution that will be very proud to add Michael Beloff's name to its roll call of honour.

I was also very aware that I was leaving a man I had found to be surprisingly modest, comfortable in his own skin, who has more than fulfilled the potential of his parents' and grandparents' intellectual legacy and will leave one of his own to college, university and the civilised world.

Let's hope he would consider coming back in one role or another if called upon to do so. The University of Oxford needs men of integrity like Michael Beloff.