Stephen Cretney

Stephen Michael Cretney,

Born on 25 February 1936,[1] Cretney attended Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1956 to 1959.^[2]

After graduating, he trained as a

Interviewed on the BBC Panorama programme on 13 February 2005 Cretney argued that a civil wedding ceremony could not produce a valid marriage between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles. It was inhibited for the same reason that Edward VIII could not marry Mrs Simpson while King, Princess Margaret could not marry Peter Townsend and Princess Anne had to marry Timothy Laurence in a Scottish church. Cretney pointed out that although the 1836 Marriage Act introduced provision for civil weddings, by section 45 it did not apply to the royal family. The Marriage Act 1949 (section 79(5)) confirmed the provision, and (although it repealed some parts of the previous Act) many of them (including section 45) remained in force. Civil marriage could have been extended to the royal family by repealing section 45 while the remaining provisions of the 1836 Act remained in force but this was not done. Rebutting Charles' claim (advanced by four legal experts who refused to give their names) that "the 1949 Act is not a continuation of the old legislation. It's a completely new act and therefore does not carry over the bar on royals having civil marriages" Cretney stated:

The 1949 Act is a Consolidation Act. A Consolidation Act does not change the law except in the most minor ways and all it does is to bring together the versions previously scattered amongst the large number of other acts.

He followed up with an article.

• (Co-edited with Gerald Dworkin) Theobald on Wills (Sweet and Maxwell, 13th ed., 1970).
• Principles of Family Law (Sweet and Maxwell, 1974; 7th ed., 2002).
• Enduring Powers of Attorney: A Practitioner's Guide (Jordan, 1986).
• Elements of Family Law (Sweet and Maxwell, 1987).
• (Co-authored with Gwynn Davis and Jean Collins) Simple Quarrels: Negotiations and Adjudication in Divorce (Clarendon Press, 1994).
• (Co-authored with Roger Bird) Divorce—the New Law, (Family Law, 1996).
• Law, Law Reform and the Family (Oxford University Press, 1998).
• Family Law in the Twentieth Century: A History (Oxford University Press, 2003).
• Same Sex Relationships from 'Odious Crime' to 'Gay Marriage' (Oxford University Press, 2006).

References

Further reading

• Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy
  , vol. 19 (2020), pp. 309–338.