Judge’s straying partner, 75, is a law unto himself

A leading QC has been described as “bonkers” by his partner — who is one of the country’s leading judges — after he left her for a legal student 50 years his junior. Constance Briscoe, 55, said Anthony Arlidge QC, 75, was “mad” for having walked out on their 12-year relationship for a Middle Temple student.

Ms Briscoe, who wrote a bestselling memoir, Ugly, based on her abusive upbringing, said Mr Arlidge had told her he had fallen in love with another woman.

Mr Arlidge, whose cases have included the Jeremy Bamber murder trial, has moved out of their South London home and into his inner Temple digs with his younger lover. He said his new relationship was “going very well”. He added: “We share a love of sports.”

Ms Briscoe said: “What is Tony, 75, and she is twenty-something? I think they are both bonkers.”

Ms Briscoe’s memoir Ugly, led to a bitter courtroom battle when her mother unsuccesfully sued her for defamation. Ms Briscoe’s brothers and sisters gave evidence on their mother’s behalf.

In an interview last year Ms Briscoe said that she was most content when at the house she shared with Mr Arlidge in France. She described his then as an “honourable, good man”.

Yesterday she was less sanguine about Mr Arlidge: “Tony is one of the most intelligent people I know, but it is mad. I have never met her, she was trying to get a pupilage when they met. She is a Middle Temple student and they met at a Middle Temple dinner and fell in love. Break-ups happen all the time but you can’t run away from old age. Tony is too old for a mid-life crisis. It is hilarious. I don’t know what she wants or what she is trying to do but good luck to them.”

Mr Arlidge, a former Crown Court Recorder who took silk in 1981, said that he had already met the mother of his new lover. “I have met her mother and she says that if her daughter is happy, then so is she,” he said.

The grandfather-of-nine added: “We are living together. The relationship is going very well.”

Ms Briscoe, who has two grown-up children with her former partner, solicitor Adam Wilson, said she had been “astonished and upset” when first told. She added: “To fall for someone just a few years older than my own son and daughter, effectively his stepchildren, is just plain daft.”