David Maxwell Fyfe’s life and legacy remembered in Edinburgh performance

Dreams of Peace & Freedom was performed at the Merchants’ Hall and featured the reflections of Maxwell Fyfe, spoken by Robert Blackmore, with songs sung by Sue and Lily Casson, accompanied by the sopranos and altos of the chamber choir of George Watson’s College, directed by Steven Griffin.

Former judge of the Court of Justice of the European Union, Sir David Edward, provided an introduction in which he reflected on Maxwell Fyfe’s involvement with the trials, in which he famously sparred with Hermann Göring and succeeded where Justice Jackson had faltered.

Theatre director Tom Blackmore, Maxwell Fyfe’s grandson, said that 25 years ago a City of London firm of solicitors notified him that they had numerous boxes of his grandfather’s papers. The love letters between his grandparents also contained in them “the story of Nuremberg from an intimate point of view”.

Dreams of Peace & Freedom, written by Sue Casson and produced by Tom Blackmore, draws upon this material to tell the story of Maxwell Fyfe; Nuremberg and the birth of global human rights. Maxwell Fyfe, who was born in Aberdeen and raised in Edinburgh – where he was educated at George Watson’s College – was an important figure in the creation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Mr Blackmore told SLN: “Throughout his life my grandfather was very proud of his time at George Watson’s Boys College where he earned a scholarship each year in order to be able to afford to remain.

“He felt that his education was the foundation of his future endeavours so he would have been thrilled that we had the opportunity to perform with and for the school.”

Dreams of Peace & Freedom was reviewed in SLN last year.