Singapore lawyer goes back to court at 85
At 85, Singapore's first home-grown head of government and outgoing Ambassador to France, David Marshall, is taking on a new job.
He will join a Singapore law firm as a consultant next month and expects to be arguing cases in court.
Mr Marshall specialised in criminal law, before he entered politics.
He became Singapore's first Chief Minister in 1955 when the then Crown colony acquired a new constitution providing for a Legislative Assembly with an elected majority of members.
In that same year, he joined the Malayan Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, in talks at Baling, in Malaya, with communist leader Chin Peng in an unsuccessful bid to end the communists' armed insurrection against the Malayan and Singapore Governments.
There was one other Chief Minister, Lim Yew Hock, before the People's Action Party gained control of the first fully-elected Legislative Assembly in the 1959 general election and Lee Kuan Yew began a 31-year rule as prime minister. Mr Lee, 70, is now Senior Minister.
Admitted to the Bar in 1938, Mr Marshall won renown as a criminal lawyer.
He was an opposition politician and lawyer when he was appointed Singapore's first ambassador to France in 1978.
He said the resumption of his law career had given him a new lease of life.
Mr Marshall said he had been approached to join the firm by a former pupil from his days as a law lecturer.
''I did not want to retire. Retirement is the antechamber to death.''
