Dame Barbara Jean Lyon Mills DBE, QC (née Warnock; 10 August 1940 – 28 May 2011) was a British barrister. She held various senior public appointments including Director of Public Prosecutions, and was widely seen as a pioneer for women gaining such appointments in the higher echelons of the legal profession. At the time of her death she was chair of the Professional Oversight Board. Early life and education She was born in Chorleywood, the daughter of John and Nora Warnock. Her father was a chartered accountant. She was educated at St. Helen's School, Northwood, where she became head girl, and then studied law at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, graduating in the second class in 1962. Career Mills was called to the Bar from the Middle Temple in 1963. She became a barrister at 3 Temple Gardens in 1967, in chambers headed by Edward Cussens. She had a successful career as a barrister, specialising in criminal prosecution. She became a prosecuting counsel in 1977, then junior Treasury Counsel at the Central Criminal Court in 1981. She secured the convictions of Michael Fagan, an Irish vagrant who broke into Buckingham Palace in 1982 and stole a bottle of wine, exposing the Palace's lax security; of the Brighton bomber Patrick Magee in 1986; and of the Guinness Four in 1990. She defended Winston Silcott when he was tried for the murder of Keith Blakelock in the Broadwater Farm riot in 1985; Silcott was convicted in 1987, but the conviction was quashed on appeal in 1991. She became a recorder in 1982, and took silk to become a Queen's Counsel in 1986. She was a member of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board from 1988 to 1990, a legal assessor of the General Medical Council and the General Dental Council, and a member of the Parole Board from 1990. She was Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) from 1990 to 1992, during investigations of Barlow Clowes, Blue Arrow, Robert Maxwell's Mirror Group, and Polly Peck. During that period, the SFO was investigating a company set up by her brother-in-law David Mills, then husband of Labour cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, in connection with bribery allegations against Silvio Berlusconi, but declined to investigate Mills himself. David Mills was later found guilty of accepting a cash bribe from Berlusconi, but the conviction was quashed by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation. From 1992 to 1998 she was