Civil servant who chaired the Iraq war inquiry and gave a damning verdict on Tony Blair
Sir John Chilcot, who has died aged 82 of kidney disease, was the quietly spoken mandarin famous for his excoriating verdict on the conduct of the Iraq war, begun in 2003. It changed the perception of one of the most traumatic episodes of recent times.
His seven-year-long inquiry into the conflict ruined the reputation of Tony Blair, Labour’s most successful leader since Clement Attlee, by exposing his subservient relationship with the US president, George W Bush, and confirming that the UK and the US had not exhausted the peace process when they went to war to topple the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.