David Patrick Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of Kilmuir, GCVO, PC, QC, known as Sir David Maxwell Fyfe from 1942 to 1954 and as Viscount Kilmuir from 1954 to 1962, was a British Conservative politician, lawyer and judge who combined an industrious and precocious legal career with political ambitions that took him to the offices of Solicitor General, Attorney General, Home Secretary and Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.
One of the prosecuting counsels at the Nuremberg Trials, he subsequently played a part in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights. He nonetheless led a crackdown against homosexuals in the UK in the 1950s. As Home Secretary he refused to commute Derek Bentley's death sentence for murder of a police officer: Bentley was hanged. His political ambitions were ultimately dashed in Harold Macmillan's cabinet reshuffle of July 1962.