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Profile: Lord Saville

Lord Saville

20/03/2010

BBC Radio 4 - Profile, Lord Saville

Edward Stourton profiles Lord Saville of Newdigate.

Edward Stourton profiles Lord Saville of Newdigate, whose report into Bloody Sunday is expected to be handed to the government shortly.

Edward Stourton looks at the life and career of Lord Saville of Newdigate, whose report into Bloody Sunday - when British soldiers killed 13 unarmed civilians in Northern Ireland - is expected to be handed to the government shortly. The report has taken 12 years and cost 200 million pounds, and become something of a scandal in its own right.

When Tony Blair announced the inquiry in 1998, 36 years after the killings on the streets of Londonderry (or Derry as nationalists call it), Lord Saville seemed a natural chairman. In this programme friends and colleagues recall his meteoric rise through the ranks of the judiciary while earning himself a reputation as a Bond-like action man, hang-gliding, dinghy sailing and earning his pilot's licence. 

He was called to the Bar in 1962, became a Queen's Counsel in 1975 and a Bencher of his Inn in 1983. He was appointed a High Court judge in 1985 and went on to become Lord Justice of Appeal and a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. He was considered to be young for a judge at the time (aged 61) and a keen advocate of new technology. 

But the Saville Inquiry has been bogged down in one delay after another, becoming the longest-running and most expensive public inquiry in British history, and Lord Saville himself has come in for considerable criticism. 

The report from the inquiry is due to be handed to the government shortly but it is still not known when the results are likely to be made public.

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