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Johnny Veeder took silk in 1986

On being assured that Johnny Veederwas in his chambers, a new pupilobserved with trepidation that hisroom looked like the immediate after-math of a bomb blast. The distinguishedlawyer was nowhere to be seen. Paperswere strewn everywhere. Books werepiled haphazardly on every surface.Then a voice was heard from underVeeder’s desk, where he was on all fours.He announced that he “had had a clearup” but could no longer find a vitaldocument. The two of them spent agood while searching, until the pupilpointed out that Veeder was standingon it. The pupil had entered the redoubtof one of the world’s most brilliant arbi-trators, scholars and teachers in disputeresolution and international law.

Taking pupils under his wing andteaching them about law, arbitration,ethics and good practice, Veeder wouldalso school them in the art of devisingcomplex practical jokes, often workinglate into the night creating spoof lettersand faxes. He would attack the key-board with two index fingers or use abroad-nib fountain pen that woulddischarge ink all over his hands andproduce a script that nobody, includinghim, could decipher.

For many years breaks were taken, atVeeder’s insistence, at a small and shab-by Tibetan restaurant in LeicesterSquare. Thankfully, it was later closedby the Health and Safety Authority.Veeder took special delight in minority(or unsafe) establishments; the moredignified the company, the less salubri-ous his choice of restaurant. Many willrecall the member states delegates’ din-ner at the United Nations Commissionon International Trade Law (Uncitral)working group session in New Yorkthat Veeder took great joy in arrangingin the most unappetising “hole in thewall” in Queens. Never before had somany state representatives bonded andagreed on key issues in such haste.

He liked nothing better than blowingthe dust off old documents and leafingthrough antiquated case law; he was afrequent visitor to the NationalArchives in Kew. Russian law became aparticular fascination.

As a visiting professor at King’s Col-lege London he would regale studentswith stories of Stalinist Russia, theAmerican Civil War (another passion),Peru’s revolutionary Communist Party(the Shining Path) and much else ofseeming irrelevance that by someingenious tangential device he wouldbring to bear on investor-state arbitra-tion. He never used the title professor,once claiming to a colleague that hewas so fed up with other people usingtitles to promote themselves that hewas searching online to purchase adoctorate.

For 20 years he was editor of Arbitra-tion International, and ensured the con-tinued success of the journal despite apaucity of contributors, lawyers beingincreasingly unable to find time in theirbusy schedules. As such, a Mr Ylts (anunknown arbitration scholar claimingto have been legal secretary to the Ma-cau Sardines tribunal) wrote a numberof significant articles. As the yearsrolled by, Mr Ylts’s rise through the aca-demic ranks was impressive. Later arti-cles credited Mr Ylts with a doctorate,

then a second doctorate, then a per-manent chair. And the quality of hiscontributions on the law of arbitrationwere as impressive as his accolades. Itwas only much later that Veeder admit-ted, under pressure, that Mr Ylts was infact him.

The pièce de résistance came in theyear 2000, amid all the concern aboutthe Y2K computer bug, when the indexto Arbitration International announcedthe article: “The ‘Y2K Problem’ and Ar-bitration: The Answer to the Myth” byProfessor Dr Ylts (Vol 16, Issue 1, 1 Mar2000, pages 79-80). On turning to therelevant page, the following appeared:“It is regretted that for technical rea-sons publication of this article wasrendered impossible.” His humour wasalways good natured.

Van Vechten Veeder was born inLondon in 1948 to John Van VechtenVeeder, who came from a prominentfamily of Dutch heritage in New York,and Helen Letham Townley, a Scot whohad studied chemistry at St AndrewsUniversity. Always known as Johnny

after his father, he was a direct descend-ant of one of the Dutch families thathad founded New Amsterdam in theearly 17th century.

His father worked for an Americanoil company in Paris and the boy wasinitially educated at the Ecole Rue de laFerme in the French capital. Agedseven he was sent to board at CliftonCollege in Bristol, where his uncle,Nicholas Hammond, was headmaster.

Already well on the way to his fullheight of 6ft 4in, Veeder excelled atrugby, playing for All England School-boys. He would play rugby for Cam-bridge, where he studied modern lan-guages and then switched to law atJesus College. After graduation hewould turn out for the Harlequins Bteam, but as his legal career quicklydeveloped he would soon have to con-tent himself with a seat at Twickenham.

He was called to the English Bar in1971 and began to practise at what wasthen 4 Essex Court. There he built abusy practice in employment and com-mercial law and took silk in 1986. Fromthe early 1980s, notably under the gui-dance of Johan Steyn (later LordSteyn), Veeder, a keen traveller, workedon cases such as Joc Oil in Bermuda

she became an apprentice at the chicmillinery boutique run by SuzanneTalbot on the Rue Royale. However, shewas already known locally as a talentedsinger.

She soon quit her apprenticeship andwas a regular performer at the manymusic halls in Paris, including the FoliesBelleville and the Bobino. At the Bouf-fes Parisiens, the theatre founded byJacques Offenbach and dedicated tothe performance of operettas and theirspin-offs, opéras bouffes, Delairemerged as a leading operetta star, aperformer who ticked all the boxes for aleading lady of that genre: saucy,mischievous and playful.

Decades later she was fêted as an“outstanding Offenbachian” for herstage performances as Métella in thecomposer’s La Vie Parisienne (1958) andas the tipsy title character in LaPérichole (1968).

At the same time as she was makingher name on the Parisian music scene,Delair appeared regularly in films.From the age of 13 she had non-singingbit parts in a string of dramas and come-

Obituaries

Johnny Veeder, QCLeading arbitration lawyer with a penchant for shabby restaurants

and Pilkington Glass in Russia. Heincreasingly focused on internationaldisputes, fighting cases of all shapes andsizes and becoming one of the world’smost sought-after arbitration special-ists. Alongside Sir Michael Kerr, heoversaw the rebirth of the LondonCourt of International Arbitration(LCIA), which kindled a massiveexpansion of the field in London.

Veeder also played a key role in arbi-tration institutions and bodies world-wide. He drafted laws and rules, formu-lated policies and represented Britainat Uncitral. When comfortably over 40,he began the first under-40 arbitrationgroup (the Young International Arbi-tration Group at the LCIA), which ledto the under-40 movement across theglobe. Delivering the Goff lecture in2001, he said: “The absence of enforcea-ble standards across national bounda-ries threatened a gradual deteriorationin standards of legal conduct. Theinternational arbitral process wouldthen be brought into disrepute and,once its reputation was lost, it couldtake decades to rebuild confidence.”

As an advocate he insisted on thehighest standards. He taught his juniorsnever to use their opponent’s names,never to use inflammatory languageand always to be open and straight withthe tribunal and the other side. He hada talent for bridging differences. Beingtaller than just about everyone else,Veeder had a way of hunching hisshoulders down to the level of the per-

son he was talking to. He was unassum-ing and disarming.

His first marriage, to Hazel Burbidgein 1970, ended in divorce. In 1991 hemarried Marie Lombardi, who workedfor the bank Paribas Capital Markets(now BNP Paribas). When they occu-pied neighbouring flats at the Barbican,Veeder had invited friends round forSunday lunch and, with typical hapless-ness, locked himself out with the steam-ing joint ready to carve on the kitchentable. He persuaded his neighbour to al-low him and his guests to troop throughher flat, into her garden and over thefence into his. Their romance beganwith a thank-you note. They enjoyedrelaxing at their home in Manchesterby the Sea, Massachusetts, where Veed-er would pilot his Concordia yacht.

She survives him along with theirdaughter Anne, who is studying zoolo-gy at Edinburgh University. He is alsosurvived by a daughter and son from hisfirst marriage. Tabitha works in humanresources and Sebastian works in sales.

He was as uninterested in his appear-ance as in his choice of restaurant andwas known to complete a multiplicity oftasks in one of his well-worn suits. Oneof his colleagues was wont to remark:“There are things he would do in hissuit that I would not do in my pyjamas.”

Johnny Veeder, QC, was born on December 14, 1948. He died of complications from pneumonia on March 8, 2020, aged 71

The practical joker would work late into the night on spoof letters

Suzy DelairFrench chanteuse who overcame the taint of Nazi collaboration to become a national institution

Like Maurice Chevalier and CocoChanel, the vivacious Suzy Delairbecame something of a French institu-tion — an Officer of the Legion of Hon-our, no less — despite being tainted bythe whiff of collaboration with theenemy during the Nazi occupation.

In March 1942 she, with a small groupof other French actors, accepted an invi-tation to visit film studios in Germany.That she was reportedly disappointednot to have met Joseph Goebbels, thepropaganda minister, left a sour taste formany French filmgoers, but it did notseem to affect her popularity unduly.She may have been punished after liber-ation, but it was little more than a ges-ture and she enjoyed her greatest suc-cesses after the war.

These did not include Atoll K (1951),the final, inglorious, movie made byLaurel and Hardy. However, Delairearned the distinction of being the lastsurviving cast member of a Laurel andHardy film.

The daughter of a seamstress and asaddler, Suzette Delair was born inParis, in 1917 or 1918. In her early teens