Judge James Barry

He had a passion for language and a powerful intellect and used both choosing an apt word or phrase in his judgements on those before him.

He also had a love of literature and music while listing eating and drinking among his recreations in Who's Who, hobbies which he pursued according to many colleagues with "unquenchable enthusiasm."

Born in 1938, he was brought up in Lancashire attending the Merchants Taylors School in Crosby before obtaining an open scholarship to Brasenose college, Oxford to read jurisprudence.

After national service where his interest in Russian translation proved a useful skill, he was called to the Bar in 1963 at the age of 25 and became a pupil in chambers at 39 Park Square, Leeds.

His practice as a barrister in the following years was mainly in the West Riding and Teesside and he subsequently took on four pupils himself as the years progressed.

One, Neil Davey QC, described at a eulogy for the judge at Leeds Crown Court this week, how it did not mean being driven immediately back to Leeds when a trial ended early in Middlesbrough.

"Carpe diem" his pupil master enthused. A three course lunch followed at a local restaurant and he was surprised to find himself then on the journey home coming to a halt in the market square in Ripon to be told there was an excellent butcher's on the corner for pork pies.

"We'll be needing something to put us on until dinnertime," he was told when showing incomprehension at the stop. Within four months of his pupillage starting, Mr Davey had put on 12 and a half pounds.

He and the other three pupils, Adrian Dent, Martin Robertshaw and Michael Bosomworth, remember James Barry passing on his own values including integrity, independence and clarity of thought, with gentle reminders "we are all human beings dealing with other human beings".

He was on call to them whenever they wanted advice, once saying: "Pupilmasters are like puppies, you know, they are for life not just for Christmas."

But his learning was worn lightly often disguised by a layer of jollity.

Juries loved his sense of humour. Defending a man in an affray trial accused of beating up two Chinese youths both called Ho with English not their first language, he asked one in cross-examination to look at a map with compass points and indicate which direction they had gone.

When the witness indicated to the left, scarcely able to suppress his amusement, Judge Barry said: "So you were a Westward Ho!"

In 1983 he became a part-time chairman of industrial tribunals and in 1985 Stipendiary Magistrate for South Yorkshire. He sat as a Recorder in the crown court before being appointed a Circuit Judge in 1994.

He was equally comfortable in all three jurisdictions, family, civil and crime, in every way a "rounded judge" said the Recorder of Leeds, Judge Peter Collier QC. Popular with staff in the courts, he was considered courteous and without pomposity.

When he retired from the bench in 2006, although he continued to sit part-time as a Deputy circuit judge, he described the modern sentencing process as "like completing a Sudoku puzzle".

Judge Barry would have enjoyed pointing out that his death was on St Crispin's Day – the patron saint of cobblers, but also the date of the Battle of Agincourt and the Charge of the Light Brigade.

He is survived by his wife Pauline and sons Matthew, David and William.