John Batt (solicitor and composer)

NOTOC Malcolm John Batt (1 May 1929 - 26 August 2017) was a British solicitor, who under the pen name John Malcolm was also a writer and composer of library music. He composed Non Stop, a short orchestral piece that was used as the ITV News theme tune from its inception in 1955 for over thirty years. Born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, he was a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral and won a scholarship to King’s College, Taunton. Legal career John Batt was articled with the Salisbury firm Whitehead, Vizard, Venn and Lush (now Whitehead Vizard). After national service, in which he acted as a court martial prosecutor for 18 months, he set up a firm of solicitors in Wimbledon - Batt Holden - staying there for 50 years. In 1964 he was also instrumental in establishing the solicitors Batt, Broadbent and Beecroft in his home town of Salisbury, to which he returned as a consultant in 2007. Using the name John Malcolm, Batt wrote his first book Let’s Make it Legal in 1966, one of a careers series about life as a solicitor. In 2000 he represented Sally Clark, another solicitor who was wrongly convicted of murdering her two sons. Batt was part of the appeal team during a re-trial which ended in he