A. P. Herbert

A Punch humorist elected as independent MP for Oxford University, Herbert had satirised divorce law in his novel Holy Deadlock before arriving in the Commons in 1935. His Matrimonial Causes Act of 1937 added desertion, cruelty and incurable insanity as grounds for divorce, where adultery had been the only one. He steered it through with careful compromises, including a bar on divorce in the first three years of marriage, to win over church opinion.