Greville Janner was one of the most flamboyant but at the same time one of the most flawed of the communal politicians who walked upon the Anglo-Jewish stage in the second half of the 20th century. Adored - worshipped almost - but reviled by others, there can be no denying that he made a mark and left a legacy.
But whether that mark was as positive as his many supporters and disciples would no doubt have wished it to be remains an open question.
Janner was born on July 11 1928 into a political dynasty consciously conceived and crafted by his father, Barnett ("Barney"), a clever and politically ambitious lawyer of Lithuanian origin whose parents had emigrated from Tsarist Russia to South Wales in 1893.
In 1970 he announced that he was retiring as MP for Leicester North-West, but deliberately left the announcement until after posters had been printed "Vote Janner" for the election called that June. Barney then cheekily suggested that, to save reprinting costs, his son might be nominated to succeed him in what both regarded as the "family" constituency.
So it was that Greville entered upon his inheritance as Labour MP for Leicester North-West (later Leicester West), retaining the seat until 1997 when he - like his father before him- moved to the Upper House.
Greville's upbringing had been solidly middle-class. Initially, a pupil at St. Paul's School, London, he spent the early years of the Second World War as an evacuee in Canada.
Conscripted at the age of 18, he found himself working for the War Crimes Investigation Unit of the British Army of the Rhine, uncovering the grim circumstances under which British prisoners of war had been shot at Stalag Luft III POW camp.
At the time he was the UK's youngest war-crimes investigator, learning German and Yiddish to assist him in this role. But at weekends he managed to find time to help Holocaust survivors at Bergen-Belsen, the notorious concentration camp which the British army had liberated; there he taught English to 60 orphaned Jewish children. This experience kindled in him a lifelong preoccupation with the Holocaust and with the preservation of its forbidding memory.
Following demobilisation, Janner secured a place to read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Of the many traits that he had inherited from his father, perhaps the most useful - and certainly the most striking - was that of public speaking, in which craft he excelled.
Meanwhile, his legal education proceeded apace. He won scholarships (including a prestigious Fulbright award) to attend Harvard Law School, and was called to the Bar in 1954. But as a lawyer he was not the success that these accolades might otherwise suggest. By his own admission he lost more cases than he won, which he frankly attributed to lack of preparation. His thoughts had, in any case, already turned to politics.
As a parliamentarian, he never achieved ministerial office. In some Labour circles he was thought too much of an admittedly media-savvy publicity seeker and in others too arrogant and over-bearing, with an aversion to the attention to detail that ministerial office requires.
But he was a hard-working constituency MP. He was particularly assiduous in cultivating the friendship (and political support) of Leicester's already large Asian population and retained the West Leicester seat through six parliamentary contests.
In 1979 Janner was elected president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, serving the customary two three-year terms. There was a certain familial inevitability, but it is equally true that he
had already proved himself to be an outspoken and powerful advocate for a range of Jewish causes, including Zionism and the State of Israel, the return of Jewish assets seized by the Nazi regime, reparations for Holocaust survivors, and the right of Jews in the Soviet Union.
He was later responsible for steering through Parliament legislation permitting the prosecution in Britain of alleged Nazi war criminals and in 1988, together with former Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, he founded the Holocaust Education Trust.
But his six-year term as president of the Board was mired in controversy. Though a consummate chairman (he was after all the author of a standard text on chairing meetings) he was regarded as patrician and aloof, not above using all manner of procedural devices to suppress debate on matters of whose public airing he personally disapproved.
In 1985 his vice-president and chosen successor as president, Martin Savitt, was defeated, largely on account of Savitt's habit of publicly defending his patron.
Janner was a very capable linguist (he reputedly spoke nine languages) and a prolific writer, authoring over 60 textbooks (some under the pseudonyms Ewan Mitchell and Lester West) on employment law and public speaking. He was a lifelong member of the National Union of Journalists, a one-time director of the Jewish Chronicle and a member of the Magic Circle and the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
He ran a successful business consultancy that trained MPs on presentational skills. One of his clients was the young Tony Blair.
In 1997, on his retirement from the Commons, Blair - by then Prime Minister - promoted him to the House of Lords as Baron Janner of Braunstone.
It was in 1991 that statements focused on Janner's alleged predilection for young boys first surfaced in the public domain, as a result of the trial and conviction of Frank Beck, sometime manager of several children's homes in Leicester. In the House of Commons Janner announced that there was "not a shred of truth" in these allegations. To a private meeting of senior members of the Board of Deputies he made the same unqualified denial.
But the allegations pursued him to the grave, as did the further allegation that several police inquiries had been deliberately blocked by unnamed government apparatchiks.
