He was also a member of the Irish Bar and the Hong Kong Bar.Comyn never forgot his Irish roots and throughout his career divided his time between England and his beloved home, “Belvin”, in Tara, Co Meath, where he bred Friesian cattle. As a trial judge he tried what was then the longest libel action in British legal history, The Daily Mail v the Moonies, and the case of Derek James v the BBC.James Comyn was appointed Recorder of Andover in 1964. The subsequent action for defamation provided a “trial within a trial” and Comyn, who believed passionately that Hinds had given up crime and was attempting to go straight, convinced the jury that Hinds had been framed. Hinds had been given 12 years by Lord Goddard for a West End safe-blowing, which he always denied being involved with. In an effort to prove his innocence he escaped three times from prison and once from the Law Courts.When in 1964 Det Ch Supt Herbert Sparks published his memoirs he said that Hinds was indeed guilty and should take his punishment like a man. One of his early successes was tinged with trepidation as he had won a suit for negligence against the bank which was providing his much-needed overdraft.He was fortunate in getting a pupillage and later a place in chambers with Edward Holroyd Pearse KC (later Lord Pearse), to whose friendship and guidance he attributed most of his later success.

In dedicating one of his books to his former master, he used Goldsmith’s phrase: “An abridgement of all that is pleasant in man.”His tremendous powers as an advocate were soon recognised and in his heyday it was regularly said of him that “Jimmy Comyn can take the stink out of the worst of cases.”One of his most spectacular successes was in winning libel damages for the former safe-blower and jail-escaper Alfie Hinds against a detective chief inspector of Scotland Yard and Reynolds’s News. He worked briefly at the BBC until his call to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1942.In Summing It Up: memoirs of an Irishman at law in England (1991), he wrote affectionately and well of his early years as an impoverished young barrister doing the rounds of the magistrates and county courts and attempting to make ends meet by giving night classes in banking (of which he knew nothing) to ambitious young clerks. After school there followed a six-month stint as a trainee journalist on the Irish Times under the formidable editor R.M Smyllie. After a joke concerning the matrimonial status of a distinguished ecclesiastic which he added to an obituary notice found its way into print he was banished to the racing department and decided to abandon journalism.He entered New College, Oxford, at 17 and in 1940 defeated Roy Jenkins to become President of the Oxford Union. But, just before de Valera gained political power in 1932, he and the Comyn brothers had an irreparable falling-out. The consequences for their legal practices were severe and it was decided that the young James, who wanted to become a lawyer, might have a brighter future on the other side of the Irish Sea.He arrived at the Oratory School in Birmingham shortly after his 12th birthday and thus began an association with the school and the Oratorians which continued until his death.

It was Michael Comyn KC who defended the English-born republican Erskine Childers and who had to advise the Court of Appeal in Dublin that his client had been executed while the appeal was pending.
The Comyn home, Beaufield House, in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, was one of the “safe houses” used by de Valera during the civil war. His father, another James, and an uncle, Michael, were barristers and were political and legal advisers to Eamon de Valera. The IRA unit that in May 1981 fire-bombed the Irish home of Sir James Comyn in the hope of striking another blow against British imperialism could hardly have found a more inappropriate target. Comyn, the son of a nationalist barrister from County Clare, was the least imperious of judges – British or Irish – and he had a natural sympathy for the underdog. Banks have been moving out.TSB used to have its head office at number 60, but when it sold up to Lloyds Bank its operations transferred across the road to Lloyds’ head office at number 71. The TSB building has been empty since last year.Royal Bank of Scotland has moved its head office operations from Lombard Street to High Holborn, outside the City. A spokeswoman for Acca says this was not the reason for the renaming.Peter Langard, president of Acca, explains: “Chartered is now the generic designation for all professionally qualified accountants.

This advertising campaign stresses that chartered certified accountants are skilled professionals who practise to the highest standards of expertise and ethics.”And definitely nothing to do with caca.One of my colleagues has noticed that Lombard Street in the heart of the City is not the pulsating thoroughfare it once was. Its acronym remains the same – Acca.So why wasn’t the old association known as Caca? And why change? Does this have anything to do with the fact that “caca” means “faeces” in Spanish, I wonder?Obviously such an acronym would not go down terribly well in Spanish- speaking countries. Strange but true.The 84-page Woolwich transfer document landed on our financial reporter’s doormat at the crack of dawn yesterday morning with such a loud thump that it woke her up This is what marketing men call “making an impact”. She awaits the crash of the mighty Halifax document later this week with trepidation.The Chartered Association of Certified Accountants has changed its name to the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.