Dering admitted to have carried out some of the operations, but pleaded that he had acted under duress. The jury found for the plaintiff, but awarded him one halfpenny (the smallest coin in circulation) in damages. Hirst had advised the defendants to pay £2 into court; since Dering had received less in damages, he became liable for the defendants' legal costs. Hirst became a Queen's Counsel in 1965. The following year, he won £5,000 in damages for Lord Russell of Liverpool against Private Eye, which called him "Lord Liver of Cesspool" and suggested he wrote a book about German war crimes to stimulate prurient interests. In 1967, he won an apology and "substantial damages" for the writer R.J. Minney against the historian M. R. D. Foot. Minney had written a biography of World War II heroine Violette Szabo, which detailed torture at the hands of the Gestapo, which Foot alleged were the products of author's "prurient imagination". His most famous case as a QC was in 1970, when he represented retired Royal Navy captain Jack Broome against the controversial writer David Irving and Cassel Ltd in Broome v Cassell. Cassell had published a book by Irving blaming Broome for the destruction of World War II Arctic convoy PQ 17. The jury awarded Broome £40,000 in damages, the largest libel award made in England until Jeffrey Archer's libel suit against the Daily Star in 1987. The defendants appealed, but the House of Lords upheld the damages. In the 1970s Hirst shifted to commercial work. He represented Paul McCartney in his 1971 lawsuit to dissolve the Beatles' legal partnership. He subsequently acted for all the Beatles in their lawsuit against their manager Allen Klein. He also acted for the Bee Gees. In 1974, he was elected a bencher of the Inner Temple, and served as reader in 1994 and treasurer in 1995. He served as chairman of the Bar Council between 1978 and 1979. He was a strong defender of barristers' exclusive right of audience in front of the higher courts. Judicial career Hirst refused a High Court judgeship after his term as chairman of the Bar Council, before changing his mind. He was appointed a Justice of the High Court in 1982, and received the customary knighthood the same year. He was assigned to the Queen's Bench Division and later sat in the Commercial Court. In 1992, he was appointed a