The relevance of the accused's good character in both senses is now firmly entrenched and the judge is obliged to give the jury a direction on its evidential value as part of his summing-up at the end of the trial (cf. the earlier discretionary approach adopted in R v. Smith [1971] Crim LR 531 CA). The law was settled by the Court of Appeal in the consolidated appeals of/? v. Vye, Wise and Stephenson [1993] 1 WLR471 С A (hereafter R v. Vye'), and by the House of Lords in R v. Aziz [1996] AC 41 HL. The good-character direction has therefore come to be known as the 'Vye direction'.