William Blair (judge) William Blair (judge) Sir William James Lynton Blair (born 31 March 1950) is a retired British judge. He was previously a Queen's Counsel, specialising in domestic and international banking and finance law. He is the elder brother of former British prime minister Tony Blair. Blair was born in Scotland to Leo Charles Lynton Blair, a barrister and later a lecturer in law, and Hazel Corscadden. Like his brother Tony, the future Prime Minister, he was educated at the independent Choristers School in Durham and Fettes College in Edinburgh, before studying Jurisprudence (Law) at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1971 with
Tony Blair Blair ordered British troops into combat five times, more than any other prime minister in British history. This included Iraq in both 1998 and 2003, Kosovo (1999), Sierra Leone (2000) and Afghanistan (2001). The Kosovo War, which Blair had advocated on moral grounds, was initially a failure when it relied solely on air strikes; the threat of a ground offensive convinced Serbia's Slobodan Milošević to withdraw. Blair had been a major advocate for a ground offensive, which Bill Clinton was reluctant to do, and ordered that 50,000 soldiers – most of the available British Army – should be made ready