My friend Robert Milsom, who has died aged 80 after a decade of Parkinson’s disease, was a legal aid solicitor who often defended the poor and outcast – and sometimes the seriously criminal. He was well known in Cambridge, where grateful former clients would approach him in the street and hug him. Robert had a deep-seated belief that everyone has the right to put forward the best defence possible.
Born in Crimplesham, Norfolk, he inherited nonconformist values from his mother, Betty (nee Hunt), a teacher, and his father, Charles, a tenant farmer.
