The life of David Maxwell Fyfe
Know thine enemy.
Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, first Earl of Kilmuir, might seem an odd subject for today’s post. Not only wasn’t he queer, but he worked tirelessly against any attempt to decriminalise homosexuality, and may well have been behind the “pogrom” of the 1950s that deliberately targeted gay men for persecution. It’s easy to look back on his life with a sense of superiority, but his opposition to homosexuals was but a footnote in a life which was generally lived well.
Born in Edinburgh in 1900 to a grammar school headmaster and his second wife, Maxwell Fyfe studied at a Scottish independent school before going on to read the Greats (Literae Humaniores, a Classics course based on the history of human learning) at Oxford. He wasn’t a remarkable scholar, more interested in contemporary politics than the ancients, and achieved only a third-class degree.
His education was briefly interrupted in 1918 when he took time out to spend a year with the Scots Guards at the end of the First World War. After graduating, he worked for the British Commonwealth Union, an anti-trade union, protectionism organisation designed to promote business interests in parliament. He worked as the political secretary to Sir Patrick Hannon MP and studied law in his spare time. He entered Grey’s Inn, a professional association of barristers and judges, and was…
