This article notes the judgment in Sophocleous v Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in which the High Court dealt with the law applicable to civil claims arising out of alleged acts of torture committed by British military and security services in the colony of Cyprus in the 1950s. The judgment is important because it sheds light on some underexplored corners of choice of law (law governing the external aspects of vicarious liability and of accessory liability in tort) and reaches the conclusion, which runs against the grain of other recent judgments given in civil claims brought against the Crown for the external exercise of governmental authority, that English law governs.